lockdown infiltration
by arcanawildcard
Summary: AU - One fateful night, Police Detective Akira Kurusu discovers his target, the mysterious phantom thief Panther, trapped in a trashcan. It's the start of something beautiful. / shuann/akirann/renann; cops&robbers AU; M for themes and non-explicit smut


**Cop**

* * *

When Akira had been assigned to the case of the mysterious phantom thief Panther, he'd expected a challenge. A lot of blurry footage and maybe some vaguely traceable patterns between targets and a long, possibly fruitless chase.

He hadn't expected this.

The mansion's security detail was extensive, and their footsteps pounded through the streets, shouting echoing off the walls—hectic, confusing, almost-but-not-quite covering up a yelp and a flash of red and a crash in his peripheral vision as he chased after the criminal.

Impulse had him slowing down beside the alley he swore the flash of red had disappeared, and curiosity had him splitting from the rush to walk down it, scanning the shadows.

He ended up in front of a trashcan.

He wasn't really thinking he'd find anything in particular when he reached out and removed the lid, but find _something_ he did.

Or rather, someone.

A someone dressed in a lot of cherry red vinyl that clung, skintight, to a hip-waist-bust ratio that looked practical for seduction and impractical for everything else—paired with a large, equally red mask that covered the top half of a very pretty face. Wide sky-blue eyes peeked out of the holes in the mask, a thick chain clamped between plush pink lips. The stolen necklace dangled its hundred million yen pendant just over the top of a generous décolletage, which was revealed by an equally generous cleavage window.

His mind took the opportunity to point out a few other things as he stared—the ungainly way her limbs were tangled and amount of flexibility she'd need to relax in a position like that, the satchel resting on her stomach that likely held the rest of the stolen jewelry, the _ten centimeter stiletto boots_ just resting against the rim of the can...

Zippers. Lots of zippers. Really _impractically placed_ zippers that looked like they were just begging for wardrobe failure. Especially with just _how much_ they were supporting.

This woman had stolen billions of yen's worth of valuables over the past five years, and hadn't been caught once.

Akira couldn't quite decide how he felt about... all that.

_"Detective Kurusu! The hell are you doing?!"_

"I'm detecting," he called back to the man—the head of security, if he remembered correctly.

_"What?"_

He glanced back down at the woman in the trashcan, who was now panic-pallid under that panther-themed mask of hers, just enough of her face visible to show her utter terror.

"...I found a cat," he said, mostly because saying anything else would leave him feeling like a monster.

The wordless groan of irritation was a familiar one to his ears. _"We're paying you to catch a criminal, not rescue felines! Get back here!"_

"Coming, coming," he agreed on an almost-sigh, then grabbed the rim of the can and slowly tipped it over, the opening facing down the alley, so gravity was a little more in her favor. It was _heavy_—an adult woman was an adult woman, supermodel figure or no.

That done, he stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered back out to the street.

Somehow, catching a thief because she'd _slipped off a roof and fallen into a trashcan_ after she'd evaded law enforcement for five years (and counting) seemed somewhat anticlimactic.

He'd... get her next time. For sure.

* * *

**Robber**

* * *

After her rescue, Ann decided that it was high time to finally look into the latest detective who'd been assigned to her case.

Police Detective Akira Kurusu was absolutely terrible at his job.

Kind of.

A two-point-five percent apprehension rate for all the cases he'd been assigned to wasn't just not good, but also _didn't make sense_ for the progress he'd made on each of those cases.

Her file didn't have so much as a note added to it, no matter that the time and place of her heist had been deducted with insulting accuracy.

Some of the other case files were left nearly empty, a description of the crime and a first-sweep list of suspects and a picture or two, despite the evident simplicity of the cases. Others were just a name away from completion—and the thoroughness of each of those left her with the feeling that those names weren't unknown so much as just selectively removed.

Those that had been passed to him secondhand were either completely untouched, like hers, or _also_ just a name away from completion.

And Commissioner Niijima _loved_ him. Which was strange, given that the other detectives working directly under her had apprehension rates closer to twenty or thirty percent—some were even nearing forty—and yet Kurusu was the one assigned the _really_ high-profile cases, paid notably well for working on them... and never delivering.

More digging revealed that he'd gone to high school with her—but so had Ryuji Sakamato and Futaba Sakura, both of whom belonged to the highly-competent-and-averagely-paid crowd.

It was times like these that Ann was forced to remember that Japan's police force was more corrupt than a hard drive dropped in the Hudson.

She wasn't entirely sure where Detective Kurusu and Commissioner Niijima fell on the scale, but the Commissioner's favorite spent his time ignoring cases and compiling blackmail. 'Corruption' was the only name for things like this.

She wished that he would just stick Panther's case on the backburner, the way her last few detectives had, but he didn't. He was _there,_ if not on the scene, then hot on her tail, in the same city, or arriving just as she was leaving.

It was _nerve-wracking._

She had style and grace galore, but not so much as to navigate high-alert security details and dogged tailing on a regular basis without a stumble.

It took four heists for her to stumble again—not literally this time, thank goodness—trapped on a wide beam high above a cluster of officers. Detective Kurusu was among them, his rich baritone putting in a dry word now and again, but not adding much more than that to the loud, somewhat frantic conversation.

She struggled to hide as much as she could behind the equally wide pillar, sneaking glances down at the group and praying to every deity she knew of to let her get out of this, if not free, then at least alive.

And then he glanced up just in time to catch her eye, and she caught dark eyes, dark hair, pale face, _police blue._

She froze, heart stopped, kitten in headlights—

He looked away and calmly said, "Thinking about this _logically,_ she'd leave through the south gate. We should be concentrating our efforts there. The north entrance is wide open anyway—it shouldn't take too many eyes to make sure she doesn't get past."

Panther blinked. There was _nothing_ logical about leaving through the south gate. She'd be a dead woman if she tried to get out that way, and she knew it.

Relative logic aside, the others latched onto the suggestion and scattered, chattering into radios as they strode away in all directions. In seconds, Detective Kurusu was the only one left.

She peered around the pillar, curiosity getting the better of her, and found him leaning his elbows on the railing in front of the huge bank of windows (they made up the _entire west wall_) and fiddling with his phone... playing what appeared to be a bubble shooter app.

...Somehow, Panther had never really considered that crooked law enforcement might play phone app games while selectively looking the other way. She'd never look at bubble shooters the same way again.

This might be a trap, but _if_ it was a trap, she'd rather be trapped in the middle of her escape than caught because she dawdled.

She shoved off the pillar and bolted.

* * *

That said, red was _not_ a stealthy color, and while that was a note of pride, the stakes were a lot higher now than she was used to.

It took about twenty seconds to make a stop by one of the closets and pick out the longest, darkest coat that caught her eye—a three-tailed tailcoat that reached her heels and had a collar she could pop up around her neck—and in the middle of putting it on, a skylight she hadn't considered before caught her eye.

In the end, her getaway ended much smoother than it had any right to, and she was left with a beautiful antique and a cool coat more questions than ever.

* * *

**Cop**

* * *

Panther was active enough that it only took a few months for Akira to get a good feel for how she operated, and in that time, the pattern he'd been _pretty sure_ he was seeing in her case file came into clear relief.

The number one rule maintained by gentleman (lady? gentlewoman?) thieves since time immemorial remained true: never steal from anyone who doesn't deserve it.

She had a few other rules as well. She never hit targets in the same city twice in a row, and tried not to hit targets in the same country more than three or four times in a row. She only pulled her heists when the target was out of town, and almost always when said trip was to check on whatever activities had gotten them on her list. She went after the shiny trophies and never touched stolen goods—sticking to things that the targets wouldn't hesitate to raise a fuss about, rather than the truly valuable things they had stowed away—and held that pattern consistently enough that it couldn't be an accident.

Panther did her research.

In hindsight, it shouldn't have been surprising, but the sheer depth and attention to detail was just _impressive._

He'd really meant to catch her at the next opportunity, he swore, but he'd gotten a little sidetracked putting together a file on her target—because embezzlement was the tip of the iceberg, and whoever thought that a children's hospital was a good cover for things like _this_ deserved to burn in hell.

He'd meant to catch her the next time, too, and the next, and the next, but his list of names to investigate (and not mention once in their inch-thick manila folders) kept growing.

He stopped trying to tell himself that he was going to catch her by the fifth heist, and stopped telling himself he wasn't helping her by the seventh.

By the ninth, he was sitting in his car with headphones on as he ignored the sirens wailing down the street, idly working through the crossword of the newspaper he'd picked up from the stand across the road.

He was fully planning to just sit here until the thunder passed and then conduct his investigation in the aftermath (much easier to gather evidence of _all_ the crimes present when there wasn't pressure to chase after one of the criminals), but then something slammed into the side of his car. Loudly.

Not a big something, a medium something. A humanish-sized thing.

He was just wondering whether it would be safer to investigate or duck and cover when one of the back doors was wrenched open and someone flung themselves into his backseat.

On second thought, maybe he should just... leave.

Except whoever it was was panting hard—not notable in itself, but... it was familiar.

_When_ he'd learned the capacity of Panther's lungs and what it sounded like when she was desperately trying to fill them, he wasn't sure, but a quick glance over his shoulder revealed a three-tailed tailcoat that covered all but a few slips of red vinyl and one slim stiletto.

He gingerly removed his headphones and turned in his seat, ready to dodge if she turned cornered-animal violent and wondering how he could manage to excuse not arresting her this time.

At the movement, she stopped breathing and went very, very limp.

"I already know you're there, you know," he said, because he'd heard things about keeping yourself from panting when your body needed oxygen, and he didn't want her to faint in his car.

She startled, then thankfully started breathing again, pulling the coat away from her face to peer up at him with eyes that were really incredibly blue.

Blue that was more curious than scared, open and only slightly cautious, and _how can I get away with not arresting her_ mysteriously transformed into _how do I get her out of here._

_Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,_ he thought, and sighed. Then he pulled his spare jacket out of the passenger seat tossed it over her legs to cover up the rest of the red, and then reached around the seat so he could pull the coat over her face again and make sure those blonde pigtails were hidden from sight.

He was just trying to figure out where he could drop her off when he heard shouting—someone shouting his name, specifically.

One of the officers was charging up to his car, waving frantically.

_"Detective! Detective Kurusu!"_

After a moment of hesitation, he rolled down his window.

"Panther's on the loose," the officer wheezed, sweating bullets in the June heat. "We need you at the station ASAP."

That threw a wrench in things.

...Or did it?

The station was only a couple blocks away, if he remembered correctly. It wouldn't be strange to assume they were going to walk.

"Understood," he said, then leaned sideways to collect his things. It was simple to let his keys slip from his grasp and into the crevice just above Panther's knee while he fussed with his briefcase, then to _absently_ lock the doors with the toggle in the arm rest instead of from the outside with the remote.

That done, he shut the door, effectively locking himself out, and jerked his head, silently asking the officer to lead the way.

Hopefully Panther wouldn't total his car in her joyride, and he'd be able to put off 'noticing' the 'theft' long enough for her to get away.

In the meantime, he had a job to pretend to do.

* * *

Six hours later, he received a text from a burner phone number—

_Haneda Airport parking structure, 2F, 5th spot left of the elevator. Keys behind the exhaust pipe._

—and let out a sigh that consisted of unidentified emotions that he didn't really _want_ to identify.

(She was okay. She was leaving the country again. She'd done her best to give him back his car—the car that he'd left in her hands, knowing, somehow, that this was exactly what she'd do.)

Better to just... focus on that case file.

* * *

**Robber**

* * *

It would be the worst idea in the world to trust a cop (_especially_ not a crooked cop), so Ann didn't.

Mostly.

The car thing _had_ to be a fluke... but the sheer number of times he'd bailed her out of her own embarrassing flubs couldn't be chalked up to accidents, even if he probably hadn't intended to let her steal his car.

Wasn't he supposed to be on her case?

He sure wasn't _off_ her case; he was _everywhere._

At least, he was at every single one of her heists without fail. She almost wondered if she should just start sending him calling cards, except that he was usually careful to arrive on the scene just a little bit too late, or dawdle in stakeout until the biggest moments had passed...

A sneaking suspicion had her checking on the state of her case file, now that it had been in his possession for half a year, and found that it was still one of those that had gone almost totally unchanged—the only thing that had been added was a list of the heists she'd pulled since.

Date, place, target, items stolen. No records of the interviews she'd _seen_ him holding. No records of the physical evidence she knew he'd collected. No mentions of the times he'd caught sight of her, no pictures, no physical descriptions, no... _nothing._

Nothing, except...

Except she found that he now had a case file for each of her targets—of the 'scarily thorough and barely incomplete' variety.

...Panther was _useful._

_That_ was why he kept helping her. She fed him her targets and gave him the perfect excuse to poke around their homes.

Ann was both relieved and disappointed. Knowing she was being used didn't feel _good,_ but at least she knew the terms now. He'd do his best to avoid arresting her as long as her freedom was of use to him.

It was a painfully cold arrangement that was dangerous as hell for both of them, but she was a thief and he was a cop, and that was just how things worked around here.

...That said, she was really, really, _really_ curious about what kind of crooked cop wanted blackmail that he never seemed to use.

A little digging revealed that Akira Kurusu lived alone in a 1LDK on the west side of Tokyo, had a pet cat, kept contact with his childhood friends—the Police Commissioner, a few other detectives working with her, a chess star, a corporate heiress, and a man who seemed to make his living doing odd jobs and then spending it all on art supplies instead of food—and frequented the convenience store that carried her favorite flavor of pudding. He'd graduated both high school and the police academy with top marks, followed the Commissioner onto the force, and worked there ever since.

He had a clean record, but had been accused of one crime in his history: assault, charged when he was sixteen, acquitted after a probation of one year.

(He also hadn't had a girlfriend since high school, which was... important. Somehow.

Well, it wasn't _really_ important, seeing as there was no way she was getting into a relationship with a _cop,_ regardless of his relationship status and opinions on relationships in general, but it felt important. So it was important. Kind of.)

Knowing all of this made the scene she was seeing now both more and less silly.

She'd been passing by his car in her escape, had caught him in the middle of getting out, and ducked into a nearby alley to observe.

He was on his phone, listening to someone shout on the other end, humming at the pauses, then finishing off with a, "I'll be right there," and ending the call.

Rather than actually make an attempt to be wherever 'right there' was, he first dug around for coins to put in the parking meter, studiously fed it a few hundred yen (how long did he plan to be here, anyway?), then wandered down the rest of the line of parking meters, peering casually at the times left on each one, before coming to a stop in front of one and pulling out his notepad.

...Apparently, wherever 'right there' was, parking violations were more important.

She did her best to get closer, trying to get a better look...

And he caught her. Obviously.

Three seconds of surprised stare-off (dark eyes, fine features, tall and relaxed and dressed in _police blue_), and then he looked away, back down at his notepad. "Can I help you, miss?"

It wasn't _exactly_ a tacit promise of safety, but it was close enough that she crept a little closer, feeling bold.

'Closer' revealed that the meter he was standing in front of still had thirteen minutes on its clock. The meter to the right had three minutes left, and the one to the left was timed out. All three had cars parked at odd angles in front of them.

The detective was still scribbling on his notepad, which may or may not even be a ticket pad in the first place.

She dipped her head so she could study his face.

It was almost comically impassive, considering the context.

He met her silent _What are you doing?_ with a nonchalant, "I'm writing a parking ticket."

Closer, closer—close enough to glance around him at the notepad.

_Apples - sale_  
_Onions - sale_  
_Detergent (laundry & dish) - sale_  
_Eggs - Taiso_  
_Ketchup - Taiso_  
_Miso - Taiso_  
_Toilet paper_  
_Pens_

She shot him a Look.

He carefully did not meet the Look, but there was something that wasn't _quite_ a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth.

"I think someone's waiting for you," she reminded him, not even trying not to be amused. "They sounded upset."

He startled, glancing at her with an expression that was marginally more shocked than it was deadpan. "I didn't know you talked."

"'Course I talk," she replied, blinking back at him. She even talked _too_ much, depending on who you asked. Back to the topic at hand: "What did they want?"

He turned his attention back to the parking meter, studiously watching it tick down to '10'. "They want me to catch some thief called... Panther, or something."

A tingle of _danger danger danger_ zipped down her spine, flipped her stomach, squeezed her lungs...

"Oh?" she asked, more aware than ever of the blue uniform—and of the gemstone sitting in her coat pocket.

"Apparently she's a big deal," he said mildly. He still wasn't looking at her. "They'd probably have her wanted posters in every station in Japan if they could."

She leaned forward—maybe arching her back a little and cocking her hip while she was at it—and tilted her head to catch his gaze, putting on her coyest kittenish smile. "Is she _that_ cute?"

He held her eye for a long moment, his pen stilling over the pad and his face giving away nothing, then he looked away, clearing his throat. "...If you're into that kind of thing."

His voice was just low enough that a little electric shock skittered down her spine, turning her insides hot and tingly and twisty, but tragically _casual._ Had her charms _really_ just bounced right off?

...Well, maybe she should be grateful; flirting with a cop (no matter how hot and mysterious) had been a pretty bad idea in the first place.

She sighed, then glanced at his 'parking ticket'. "...If you're going to Taiso, you have _got_ to try their flan."

"What?"

"The Uji Matcha Flan is the best, but it's kind of expensive." She thought about just _how long_ it had been since she'd been able to justify the cost and suppressed a sigh. "The dulce de leche one is pretty good too, and a lot cheaper."

"Miss, I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," he said, carefully careless, but with an undertone that was just warm enough to melt. His pen moved almost idly over the pad, _Flan (uji matcha & dulce) - Taiso_ appearing under the last item of the list in blocky, immaculate script. "I'm writing a parking ticket."

Panther stared at the words, knocked off balance somehow.

He didn't have to do that.

She was a thief. He was a cop. He was looking the other way because her freedom benefited him, and she wasn't just playing with fire, she was playing in an _active volcano_ getting this close.

It was a cold, dangerous arrangement, but he was standing here and pretending to write a parking ticket instead of catching her and jotting down her dessert recommendations while he was at it.

The wail of rapidly approaching police sirens kept her from examining the feeling more than that. She _had_ to escape from the rest of the security brigade ASAP.

The back of her mind noted that she was well within range if he were to turn around and pull those handcuffs off his belt, but...

He was writing a parking ticket.

Impulsively, she edged closer—close enough to rest her fingertips on his shoulder and feel the muscle underneath, breathe in subtly cool-scented cologne and detergent and coffee; close enough to realize that she wasn't _quite_ tall enough herself to rest her chin on that shoulder even with heels; close enough to admire the way the light from the streetlamps played over the graceful planes of his face...

And close enough to pull him down and press her lips to his cheek in impulsive affection, his skin soft and warm under the late-night chill.

She let go and danced back before he could call her on it.

Belatedly, she realized that kissing the hot (crooked) cop was probably even less wise than flirting with him. _Oops._

(Gratitude was what made her do it, though, plain and simple. Eccentricities and dubious morality aside... she was grateful for Akira Kurusu. That was a strange feeling to have.)

She caught the start of a startled glance as the sirens got louder, and wiggled her fingers goodbye with her very best smile.

Then she turned tail and bolted, her coattails flapping behind her.

* * *

**Cop**

* * *

The flan wasn't bait.

Panther might have styled herself after a cat, might even act like a bit like a cat sometimes, but she was a human being with more sense than to be lured in by food. She wasn't like the strays Akira taken to feeding in the alley behind his apartment. If the flan was bait, it was doomed to fail.

He just kept it on him because he liked it, was all.

And it _was_ pretty good—he wasn't normally one for sweets, but Taiso's flan might make him a convert.

He found himself glancing through the other goodies in the isles, wondering if Panther was the kind of girl who liked their castella and truffles, too. Did she like desserts wholesale or was it just a flan thing? The silky, simple sweetness of the flan wasn't anything like the texture of castella or the bitterness of chocolate...

And yet, it would fit. A penchant for sugar would fit that smile, those big blue eyes, that voice—god, that _voice_...

(Rich and satiny, playful and sultry, _cute_ in a way that made his pulse trip and his mouth go dry, and the pert lilt of it had lodged itself into his hindbrain and was refusing to be budged.)

...Back to the topic at hand, the flan wasn't bait. He just _liked it,_ and that was why he had it.

Getting closer to Panther, with or without bait, would be a bad idea. She was a _thief._ It was his job to _catch her,_ not to—

(Not to kiss her, touch her, _admire_ her, pull her flush against him and ask her what he needed to do to convince her to stay...)

—_not to get distracted._

Getting involved with Panther would be a bad idea. It just _would_ be.

Which was why the flan _wasn't bait,_ and also why he was looking forward to eating it once he got back to his car.

It was Paris, the heat was _insane,_ it looked like Panther was fixing to lead him on a chase through the whole of Europe this time, and he was sick to death of trying to communicate with the local officials through the double-barrier of heavily accented English. She'd left the scene of the crime over an hour ago anyway—no reason why the rest of the investigation couldn't wait for a cooler time of day.

It was petty, but he was sort of looking forward to eating her favorite dessert while knowing that she was not. The heatwave was unbearable, and she was the reason he had to bear it.

Except when he dug out his coldbox, the flan was missing.

In its place were several coins and two bills, adding up to exactly two hundred ninety-eight yen in total.

He pulled the worn paper and tarnished coins out of the cup they'd been left in, the price of the flan repaid in full; a gesture conscientious and earnest and somehow not unexpected at _all_...

(_"Is she that cute?"_ she'd asked, her little devil smile making all those bad ideas look so, _so good._

'Cute' wasn't the first word that came to mind—_mind-numbingly hot_ was more comprehensive—but it wasn't inaccurate.

_"If you're into that kind of thing,"_ he'd replied, too tellingly after too many seconds spent beating back temptation.)

He'd known since the start that he was 'into that kind of thing,' but now...

Now...

Alone in his empty car, Akira slumped over the burning steering wheel, the bills crackling against his palm and a smile prying at the corners of his mouth with a crowbar.

"...Dammit."

* * *

**Robber**

* * *

Somehow, some way, for some reason, Ann's favorite detective had become a carrier of all her favorite sweets. Not just the flan, but castella _and_ truffles _and_ ice cream, too.

Had she gotten him hooked on Taiso's dessert selection? She'd say she was sorry, but she wasn't, really. He took some with him _everywhere,_ from New York to Dubai to Taipei—and she could only view her newly-inducted sugarholic with pride.

Not that that kept her from occasionally misappropriating those delectable delicacies. A girl had _cravings,_ you know? Plus, they were totally on opposite sides, and all was fair in love and war. She _loved_ flan, they were definitely at _war,_ and really, it was convenience store fare. It was fair game!

(And in her defense, she _did_ pay him back. She was taking his dessert for the thrill of it, so at least she should make sure he could still get some more for himself.)

Which was why she was stopping three blocks from his car with treat in hand, belatedly realizing that she hadn't paid him back—for Uji Matcha Flan, no less. Three thousand yen wasn't exactly anything to sneeze at.

A quick check through her boots and cleavage yielded a total of seven hundred yen.

Panther regarded the cup of deliciousness and her lackluster funds for a long moment, then bid the flan farewell with a mournful sigh. Hopefully she could return it before he noticed.

Unfortunately for her, she found him getting into his car _right_ at the moment she got back.

_Shoot._

Well! This was just another test of her abilities. Could she return the flan before he noticed? Difficulty level: super-stealth hard mode.

(She was... _pretty_ sure he was still carefully looking the other way with regards to actually capturing her. She couldn't _count_ on it, but she wouldn't be surprised if he found another parking ticket to write in the event that he saw her.)

She dropped onto the roof of his car without a click and disturbing the weight as little as possible, then peeked down through the window once she heard his breathing point the other way.

She didn't _quite_ manage to get to his coldbox before he checked it, and winced at his quiet, surprised little, "Oh."

She did, however, manage to put the flan back when he started sifting through his briefcase.

_Success!_

And then he flicked the toe of her boot where she'd thoughtlessly hooked it into the top of the open window for balance.

...Oops.

"Hmm, would you look at that," he said at speaking volume, definitely meant to carry to her ears. "How odd. Transient flan."

His tone was so fondly amused that it almost felt like a hug, but Panther still wilted over the hood of the car, cheeks burning.

She squirmed into a crouching position, ready to spring back up the side of the building he was parked next to, when he spoke again, quiet and oddly hesitant.

"You know what else is odd?"

Panther paused.

"This case I was just given." He waited for a few seconds, then when she stayed, he added, "I'm being paid quite a lot to bring this culprit to justice, and the victim was... _insistent_ that it happen quickly. By the 27th—exactly two weeks from now."

What?

"That's... pretty odd," she agreed slowly.

"It shouldn't be too hard," he went on amiably, like he was telling a coworker over drinks. "A little security footage, a few eyewitness accounts... I even already have a confession. Open and shut, cut and dry." Panther heard a quiet _tap-tap-tap_ of gloved fingers hitting a steering wheel. "And yet I could probably buy a new car with the bonus."

_More corrupt than a hard drive dropped in the Hudson._

"That's... generous."

More like a bucket of cold water.

She'd told herself time and time again she couldn't trust him, and yet...

A long moment passed, like he was deciding what to say, then, "The... _culprit_ worked for Luminosity Inc., and the CEO, Saito Tatsuya, _personally_ asked the Commissioner to put her best man on the case. He must really care about the future of the company." He shifted, a rustle of fabric against seat leather. "...Or he just doesn't want anyone looking too closely at this case."

The hard, dry edge to that last bit caught her ear, stilling the frisson of pain in her chest.

Memories of all those untouched case files he'd been assigned flickered across her mind—and how very _cut and dry_ each of them had looked at a glance.

"Not that I can prove anything," he sighed, putting on just enough airs that she leaned in despite herself. "I have no reason at all to poke my nose into Saito Tatsuya's affairs."

And what names had been missing from those well-fluffed folders anyway?

"No reason?" she echoed, a suspicion forming in the back of her mind—a suspicion that had the hurt and betrayal dissipating into hope.

Suddenly, she was wondering how big the bonuses for that first set of cases were, and if they just happened to correlate to the sizes of the second set.

"Not a single one," he said mildly. "I really wanted to see those Madarame originals of his, too."

Panther didn't care one bit about anything Ichiyusai Madarame had plastered his name on, but she was pretty sure she was hearing a request there that she had no desire to turn down, so she only said, _"Madarame originals,_ you say."

It was possible, just possible, that her favorite detective was more scrupulous than she'd dared to hope for.

"I hear he recently had a necklace commissioned for his wife," he added, coaxing. "Ten million yen for the work alone, another eighty for the materials..."

Now _that_ was more her speed.

Shoving down that uncharacteristic timidity clogging her throat, she asked, "Should I be writing this down?"

There was a shuffle of rummaging through a bag, then the clap of something papery hitting the passenger seat, followed by the clunk of a pen.

She sprawled flat on the roof again in interests of swiping the offerings—his notepad, flipped open to a blank page, and the expected pen—and didn't bother getting back up as she kicked her heels and pulled both to her chest like it was a diary.

"Now tell me what you know."

* * *

He knew a _lot._ Man, she wish she had his information networks. She usually spent months leaving her targets on simmer while she gathered evidence for several of them bit by bit, but he had all the basics outlined in ten minutes.

"So that's everything?" she asked when he finally seemed to run out of steam and she had two full pages of the notebook filled up with addresses and subsidiaries and names and incidents.

He hummed low in his throat, then broke off coughing.

"You okay?" Something as undignified as 'needing air' seemed like the kind of thing he would disdain.

He grunted an affirmative between coughs, then she heard the crackle of a bottle being opened.

...Actually, come to think of it... "I think that's like... ten, maybe _twelve_ times as many words as everything I've ever heard you say put together."

He paused between gulps of whatever he was drinking, then lowered the bottle with a bubbly rush of liquid, breathed, and sounding almost surprised, he croaked, "Me too."

The sharp surge of affection lancing through her chest took her by surprise, made her pause before she ripped the pages out of his notepad.

She hesitated only a second before flipping ten pages or so back, took a second to touch up her lipstick, and planted a kiss on the corner. A loose heart and an 'oxoxoxo' joined the mark, then she flipped the pages back into place and took the two with her collection of tips. That was just far back enough that it wouldn't be obvious, but he'd find it soon enough anyway, she hoped.

"The 27th, right?" she said as she tucked the pages into her cleavage and dropped the pad and pen back into the passenger seat. "Two weeks isn't much time, but... I'll do my best." She'd just wriggled back into a crouch when he asked, "Why didn't you keep the flan?"

Her cheeks warmed again. "I... didn't have enough to pay you back."

(She hadn't been able to fence that last vase for _quite_ as much as she'd thought she would and, thanks to a couple of miscalculations, had blown through most of what she had trying to get set up for Kyoto—and now that she was going to be staying in Tokyo, it was all for nothing. She was probably going to be living off ramen for a week or two, huh. Ugh.)

"...You're a _thief."_

"I only steal from people who deserve it, you know," she replied, miffed. Wasn't that the point of this whole conversation?

"Guess you do," he murmured, almost to himself, and that was that.

She made her escape before anyone could catch her hanging around.

* * *

**Cop**

* * *

"How is the investigation going, Detective?" was what Makoto greeted Akira with when he stepped into her office.

"It's going, Commissioner," he replied as he pulled the door shut behind him.

"Saito Tatsuya is... not pleased with your progress," she informed him dryly. She picked up a stack of papers and tapped the bottom edges against her desk to settle them. "I have several threats of... dire consequences if I don't assign anyone more capable to help him."

"How rude."

"Panther's jewel heist seems to have distracted him from the initial case, though," she said as though she hadn't heard him. "That was some lucky timing."

Lucky indeed. She'd managed it with three whole days spare, no less.

"Although..." she went on as she set the papers aside. "The look on Tatsuya's face when I told him that you were the detective on her case as well was quite something."

Akira could imagine. "We have an excellent working relationship," he reassured her.

She just smiled. It was that one particular smile everyone gained after a year or two of knowing him, which was a note of pride and disappointment and also slight chagrin for him. The point at which they gained that smile was usually the point they stopped reacting, and that was boring.

Then Makoto held out her hand. "Progress report, please."

He fished his notepad out of his pocket and handed it over. He didn't really _need_ it to keep track of his cases, but if he didn't write it down, she'd make him recite everything out loud. He'd left oral presentations behind in school where they belonged, thank you very much.

She read through his notes with a careful eye, slowly flipping through the scrawling shorthand summarizations of the interviews and evidence he'd collected—then stopped abruptly.

He hadn't seen an expression on her face _that_ interesting in years.

"...What?" he asked when she failed to move after a few seconds.

She released a deep sigh, then said, "If I were to ask how surprised you are that Panther decided to target Saito Tatsuya _now_ of all times..."

A tingle of nameless suspicion zipped down his spine. "Very surprised."

She rubbed her temple with one hand and handed the notepad back to him with the other. "Sometimes, I wish I didn't know you as well as I do."

He looked down and—_panic_ jolted through his gut, quickly followed by the burn of embarrassment.

Apparently Panther had left her mark the last time he'd seen her. A lipstick print and a heart and a row of Xs and Os decorated the spread of an otherwise untouched page, a few pages after where he'd left off.

And as if being caught out wasn't embarrassing enough, he could feel his face and ears start to warm up in what was doubtlessly a blush.

He'd left blushing long behind him, dammit.

Makoto interrupted his distress with a dry, mild, "As your ex-girlfriend, I finally understand why it never worked out between us."

His train of not-thought stuttered and he looked up in confusion.

Her hands were folded in front of her on the desk in a stern, parental manner. "I don't know why I didn't see it after the scam artist, or the back-alley doctor, or the rogue reporter—"

There was an implication there that he didn't like much. "What are you trying to say? They were all perfectly respectable people."

Makoto could pull the 'I'm not judging you, but I'm judging you' expression like no one else. "...Kawakami was our homeroom teacher."

"And?"

Makoto looked even less impressed. "You dated her _while_ she was our homeroom teacher."

He couldn't really argue with that.

She tucked her hair behind her ear, angelic smile falling right back into place. "All I'm saying is that they all left _much_ to be desired, morally, and I feel better now. I'm far too law-abiding for your tastes."

Now _that_ was just insulting on every account.

He hummed in noncommittal acknowledgement and stuffed the incriminating notepad back in his pocket, then unceremoniously dumped his briefcase on the desk. "Your blackmail, Commissioner."

It was incredibly satisfying to see that angelic smile go stilted and sideways.

"...Thank you," she said. Then, without pause, "That was to make a point, wasn't it."

Akira just smiled right back.

* * *

Of course, both of their smiles were dust in the wind by the time Makoto finished catching up with his cases.

Organ harvesting in a _children's hospital_ was enough to turn even his stomach a bit, but the acme of that particular scheme had PR made of titanium, and prosecuting someone with both money _and_ public goodwill was nigh impossible. Scandal rolled off these people's backs like water, and with the help of monetary lubricant, so would any charges.

That didn't mean they couldn't do _anything,_ but any doing they could do involved paying off a lot of key people themselves, and the police department's pockets were only so deep. Plus, there were only so many strategic falls from grace they could orchestrate before they risked becoming 'suspects' themselves, and they'd been walking dangerously close to that line for a while now.

In the end, they reluctantly decided to keep their distance for now. In the meantime, they'd put an anonymous tip into the circuit and have one of the up-and-coming detectives poke around the hospital in question—hopefully that would throw a wrench into the works for the worst of the operation.

They were both nursing headaches by the time Akira got up to leave.

Makoto followed him, cracking her neck and scrunching her mouth at his pocket—the one where he'd stowed the notepad. "It's too bad none of the small fry would catch Panther's eye, huh."

"I'm still trying to catch her eye myself," he said as he packed up. It wouldn't do to leave documents like this just lying around the Police Commissioner's office.

"You sure about that?" she said in that 'you aren't fooling _anyone'_ tone that he usually deserved.

It was enough to make him falter. He hadn't been entirely serious, but he hadn't been entirely joking, either. Unaffected airy kisses aside, _I only steal from people who deserve it_ had been his first indication that she didn't hold their respective positions against him at all, maybe never had, and, well. Thought was free, wasn't it?

"Look," Makoto said, kicking back her chair, "as your boss, I'm telling you: this conversation never happened. I have no idea that you may be consorting with the enemy. My best detective _isn't_ doing anything _or_ anyone out of the ordinary, and it was just bad luck that your cases overlapped like this, right?"

"...Right."

"As your friend..." She slumped like defeated exasperation had seeped into her very bones. "Just don't get caught, okay?"

"But we're not—" he started, but she still wasn't listening.

"I know you, okay?" she went on as she approached the door. The stern glare was back. _"Don't_ have sex on top of the police car. Even _I_ can't get you out of trouble if you get caught like that."

Akira didn't _choke_ so much as the mental image hit him right in the gut, but he mostly managed to avoid making a noise either way.

"If you have to, at least have sex _inside_ the car," she said, like sex involving the car was just a given somehow.

"That's not—"

She froze with her hand on the door handle, paling before his eyes, then jerked said door open. "You've already done it, haven't you. _Of course_ you've already done it—it's been almost a year."

He didn't even have the chance to take a breath to defend himself. Makoto had opened the door to the peanut gallery; Futaba and Ryuji were dawdling in the empty lounge, playing a game that had betting chips resting beside a mess of playing cards.

"What'd he do now?" said Futaba, rocking back in her desk chair.

"Had sex on top of a police car," Makoto replied thoughtlessly, looking much more harried than his definite innocence warranted.

Futaba's eyes gleamed worryingly bright.

"With who?" Ryuji wanted to know, much too interested for comfort.

"Ooh, ooh!" Futaba raised her hand like a kid in class. "Is she grifter?"

"Or a smuggler?" was Ryuji's guess.

"Or a hacker! You haven't slept with any hackers yet."

"Oh man," Ryuji said, then dropped his voice. "Is she a drug dealer?"

"I'm not—" Akira protested.

Futaba frowned up at him, earnest. "Don't sleep with drug dealers, Akira. That's just a bad idea."

_This is the problem with being quiet,_ Akira mused. _People get used to talking over you._

"It's Panther, the thief," Makoto grumbled as she turned back to her office, because she was an awful person.

Both Futaba and Ryuji's jaws dropped, then Ryuji picked his up to whistle long and low.

"How the hell'd _that_ happen?" he asked in an awed murmur.

The grin blooming over Futaba's face was downright sharky. "C'mooon, Akira. Deets! Who confessed first? What was the first date like? Does she like the uniform? _I_ think she should like the uniform."

"How is she in the sack?" Ryuji wanted to know, because that was just who Ryuji was as a person.

"...I have to go," Akira said as he started moving again. He really didn't feel like going through... this. "I said I'd have lunch with Yusuke and Hifumi—"

"No-no-no!" Futaba yelped, shoving away from the table so she could latch onto his coat, and then onto him, her arms wrapped around his middle in an octopus-tight hug right as he arrived at the opposite door. "Wait! You haven't told us anything! You can't just leave _now!"_

"Sure I can," he retorted, trying and failing to escape her grip.

"Nooooo..." she groaned, half-muffled with her cheek smushed against his back. "This is the first time you've liked anyone in, like, a million years. And it's _Panther._ You gotta tell us about this. You gotta!"

He continued to struggle. "I'm going to be _late."_

Futaba fixed him with the full-tilt puppy pout, guaranteed to have adoptive fathers and brothers wrapped around her finger in a heartbeat. "At _least_ tell us if she's hot."

Akira hesitated. The look on Ryuji's face said that that might be his price too, and Makoto had already left the room. "...If I do, will you let me go?"

Futaba's pout flicked off like a light switch, mission accomplished. "Maybe. So, on a scale of one to ten...?"

He heaved a sigh, suddenly glad for all the care he'd taken to mysteriously do away with even the most fleeting photographs of his suspect. "Twenty. Now let me go."

Futaba's arms went slack, and Akira got out the door while he still could, snapping it shut behind him.

Once outside, he breathed in the blessedly cool, _silent,_ and _vacant_ air around him for one solid second, and then through the door, he heard, _"Oh my god, Ryuji, she's turned him to hyperbole!"_

Ryuji said something back that was quiet enough to be unintelligible, and Akira rubbed the back of his neck, dolefully resigning himself to ignoring his phone for a while.

Now he just had to hope Hifumi and Yusuke wouldn't be notified of this until _after_ lunch.

* * *

**Robber**

* * *

Saito Tatsuya wasn't nearly the last target Detective Kurusu passed to Panther, and while he didn't directly pay her for her help, he always seemed to make sure the rewards would be more than worth her while.

She would have been happy to take them down purely to see their crimes exposed, but she (and her stomach) appreciated the consideration all the same.

Even more than that... she appreciated that chance to talk to him now and again. She hadn't realized just how very little human interaction she'd had until there was someone right there who welcomed (even invited!) her presence on a semi-regular basis, his affection and care evident enough as to be almost palpable. She wasn't exactly in the habit of befriending her fences, and most of her other 'contacts' barely qualified as such.

It wasn't like they talked _much,_ but now he knew her birthday and that she'd gone to school in Japan but never graduated secondary. She'd seen pictures of his cat that never made it online and heard wry implications that maybe that assault charge wasn't the only crime he'd committed, just the only one he'd gotten caught for.

They exchanged words, written or spoken, every two or three weeks at the _most,_ and yet he was the closest thing she'd had to a friend since she'd left Shiho behind to flee the country when they were 16.

Thinking about it, that was pretty sad, huh.

Pretty sad, and maybe kind of dangerous, too.

He was still a cop. He could still decide to take her in at any time, come the time he decided she was more trouble than she was worth. She'd learned not to trust people pretty early on in her career, but there was just something about him that shut all those alarms off.

Which was probably why, drugged to high hell and back, she'd seen his stakeout car dawdling in a backstreet after her heist and decided that that was a good place to wait out the tranq the latest target's security had nailed her with.

She wasn't in the best shape otherwise, either. She hadn't expected the rain (no matter how much time she spent in Europe, she never managed to predict the weather), but it was raining cats and dogs, and her escape route had been in wet, slippery shambles. Some of her falls would be leaving her with nasty bruises, and one particular slip had left her with a cut that ran from one collarbone to the neckline on the other side of her chest.

It stung dully as she drifted, huddled under the sparse shelter offered by the overhang next to the car. She'd had enough sense to make sure she wouldn't be immediately obvious to anyone who was just passing by, but that was about it.

She had no way of knowing how long it was that she sat there—her heist had started at about three A.M., but the dense cloud layer blotted out the moon if it was still out, and the sun too, if it had risen—but it was long enough that the peak of the tranq's effect came and went, and the world was just barely starting to come back into focus when she heard the deep clap of approaching footsteps.

She tensed, identified the gait (Detective Kurusu's, steady, alone), and relaxed again. She'd need to get moving again once he took the car back to wherever he was staying, but one more minute of rest wouldn't go amiss.

Except it kind of almost did (maybe), because he paused right before opening the door and looked right at her.

She thought about smiling, managed nothing but a blink, and gave up. Maybe she wasn't actually up for making a break for it after all.

It was a good thing she wasn't alone now.

"Panther?"

She blinked again. He was kind of dark and silhouette-y right now, framed with his see-through umbrella by the ambient light shining off the car behind him. Very mysterious.

"...You don't look so good."

She made her jaw work, then formed the words, "Got tranq'd."

He stilled, then exhaled a sharp sigh and dropped to a crouch in front of her, blocking the worst of the draft.

"It w's slipp'ry," she confessed sheepishly. It kind of seemed like the kind of thing that would make a funny story later, once she was coherent enough to tell it.

"Mm," he agreed. Cautiously reaching out to touch her arm, he said, "Let's go to the hospital."

She shook her head, then squeezed her eyes shut as she fought down the ensuing nausea. "'S fine. 'M fine."

"No, you're not."

"Jus' a cut," she argued. "'N the tranq isn' one o' th' bad ones. Just need t' sleep it off."

Granted, she was still slurring, but she knew what this brand felt like, and the worst really had passed. Already she was starting to be able to make out his features.

"...Because you've been hit with tranquilizers often enough to be able to tell them apart," he repeated sardonically, almost like he was talking to himself. Then, definitely directed at her, "How old are you again?"

That took her a few seconds. She hadn't celebrated in a very long time, and the lack of cake made things kinda blur together.

"Twenty-two," she eventually decided. It wasn't November yet. Probably.

Almost as if he'd read her mind, he then asked, "And today's date is?"

It was the tenth of something, probably. Probably... "May."

"...It's June, actually," he informed her, and then sighed again. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

She didn't even try with that one. "Dunno. It's dark. Two?"

It was always two. At least it was getting easier not to slur.

"One," he corrected, then reached out again. "I think it's time to go to the hospital—"

She hissed. His grip was much firmer this time, squeezing what was absolutely a bruise in the making, and it _hurt._

He let go like she'd burned him, then slumped. "How long will it be until you can move on your own, then?"

She tilted her head as she thought about it, finding her arm too heavy to scratch the back of her neck with. The heist had been at three A.M., and this tranquilizer usually took about ten to fifteen hours to leave her system completely, but usually she could walk after five hours and jump after eight. Talking to someone seemed to be making it go quicker though, so... "Ten A.M.? Maybe eleven."

She still didn't know what time it was now. The sky looked all the same to her.

He hesitated, then nodded. Then, turning back to his car, he opened the door.

Her stomach lurched.

She hadn't expected him to _leave_—and... being alone was suddenly a much more chilling prospect than it had been when he found her.

But no, he wasn't leaving. Just rummaging around in the back of his car to produce a small case and a cloth of some sort.

When he opened it next to her under the overhang, the case proved to be a well-stocked first aid kit. The cloth came to hover uncertainly near her chest, and it took her a second or two to put together that he meant to clean the cut.

She dipped her chin in slightly bemused permission.

Left hand cradling her right bicep lightly enough to avoid aggravating her still-forming bruises, he very, _very_ gently swiped the cloth along the line of dull throbbing across her chest.

Even in the dark, she could see how red the cloth came away.

He exhaled just loud enough for her to hear over the rain, then set the cloth down so he could pull off his pristine white gloves.

Her cheeks prickled at the unexpected intimacy of the gesture, tranq be damned.

It was his bare hands dressing her wound after that, warmth she could just barely feel through the pain of the cut and the numbing chill of the rain, skin-to-skin in only the barest, most glancing of ways, and yet...

She felt much more awake than she had any right to by the time he was done smoothing down the medical tape that held the gauze in place, her heart thumping and her face warm.

It felt nice to be cared for like this.

Maybe even better than 'nice.'

How long had it been since she'd been able to just relax and _enjoy_ being touched?

Long enough that this was almost a nostalgic experience.

It ached in an entirely different way when his hands drew away, long fingers rearranging the supplies in the first aid kit and clicking the case shut, leaving the rag on the ground in favor of picking up his gloves and starting to put them on again.

She _could_ put down what she did next to still being fuzzy from the drugs, but she wasn't in the habit of lying to herself—she probably would have done the same thing if she'd been fully in her right mind. That little taste of physical affection had been potent.

She summoned up the will and strength to push herself up and wrap her arms around his neck in a hug.

He stilled, and she was given a few seconds to breathe in the smell of him, feel his skin, yearning heavy on her tongue.

Stale, faint cologne and the slightest hint of stubble; the softness of a day well worn into his clothing and the strong, steady, broad shoulders underneath...

_Human_ and _warm_ and the closest thing she'd felt to _home_ since she left Japan—maybe even since she'd had to leave Finland and her caretaker behind—and it melted something deep inside her that had been frozen for far too long.

Then he started breathing again, a hitching inhale and a deep exhale, and hugged her back, the gentle pressure of his forearms supporting her weight for her, shifting so he was almost straddling her lap as he pulled her close.

It was a full-bodied hug then, and with the press of his torso, he had her totally enveloped from ears to hips, stupidly gentle-warm-safesafe_safe._

Panther's throat locked up, eyes stinging. _All_ of her was melting now, melting into the cloth rubbing against her face and melting against his chest, firm and solid and more _real_ than anything had been in a very, very, very long time.

A small blissful eternity was lost to the sensation, and then he tried to let go—'tried' being the operative term.

The first slackening of his grip pulled a high mewl of protest out of her throat, fingers curling in his jacket without conscious thought.

He stiffened for a few heartbeats, then relaxed with a slow exhale, and then a clicky swallow. Voice rough, he said, "We need to get out of the rain..."

She whimpered, eyes stinging harder at the thought of having to let go.

Another exhale, this one shorter and punchier and more amused. "You can sleep it off in the back of the car."

Grumbling in the back of her throat, she silently conceded to necessity. That still sounded horribly cold, but it wasn't rain and wet.

Getting up involved the handle of the umbrella thumping against her cut and her clinging to Detective Kurusu for all she was worth while he hefted her up like a child—mostly because she didn't want to let go, but there was also the issue of her legs not quite functioning yet—and then made a grab for the door.

A series of clunks later, and he set her down on the backseat, the umbrella scratching against the roof and her legs dully hitting the corner of the seat.

Chill aside, the air inside the car was still and dry, and she was instantly warmer than before.

Unfortunately, Detective Kurusu seemed to take this as a sign that they should part.

Panther rejected this notion. Vehemently.

She remained stuck to him with every ounce of strength left in her heavy arms—which wasn't much, just enough that he huffed into the crook of her neck and braced his arms on the roof.

"You need to let go," he murmured, the rough edge to it slipping down her throat and sparking in the pit of her belly. "You wanted to sleep it off, remember?"

"Want _you,"_ she whined, mouth muffled between her bicep and the column of his neck.

The wind picked up, and he shivered. Drawing a slow breath, he exhaled a quiet, "Right," then, in a speaking tone, dryly replied, "And you're welcome to have me, but sleep first."

This was another one of those times when she honestly couldn't tell if he was being serious or not, which was half of why she let him pry her arms apart.

She collapsed onto the bench, pouting up at him. She didn't _want_ to sleep. She wanted _cuddles._

Attempting to communicate that with her eyes took several seconds, during which her attention was slowly stolen away by his dark eyelashes and the cut of his mouth, the way the reflected light played around the tendons that framed his Adam's apple, how _deliciously_ his uniform fit his broad shoulders and the slight taper to his chest, pulling tight over his—

He pushed away from the door like he was breaking out of a mold, tugging restlessly at his collar as he resettled the umbrella and started helping her bed down.

He helped her scoot up and get her legs inside the car, pulling blankets and jackets out of who knew where and covering her up with them, both to hide her and keep her warm.

She was dozing by the time he gave her a coat to bundle under her head, and almost asleep when he shut the back door and slid into the driver's seat himself, starting up the engine and turning on the heater.

* * *

She woke up well past noon (3:47 P.M., she found on the car's digital clock) fully refreshed, and found a paper fast food bag set in front of her nose and her host asleep himself in the driver's seat, arms folded over his chest and his head lolling.

She started picking herself up and mentally putting herself together again, finding that her legs were her own again and feeling more _rested_ than she'd ever felt in any of the finest hotels money could buy.

Detective Kurusu's face was softer like this, she noted. More open, even if it was just as blank as ever.

_And you're welcome to have me, but sleep first._

She wondered, just for a second, if 'having him' would let her see his expression this relaxed while he was awake, too—and from there, it was just so easy to slip deeper into wondering if she could get it to relax _more._ What it might look like if it was flushed and hazy and sated, if he might smile as he pulled her close and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her, skin against skin and touch for touch...

_Oh, no._

Not here, not now, _not him._

Panther lurched back, mindlessly grabbing at the paper bag and not even flinching at the crunch, panic spinning-searing-chilling her gut in flight-flight-flight.

The street was blessedly empty when she stumbled out and bolted.

* * *

**Cop**

* * *

Akira hadn't heard from Panther in two months.

Which was... fine, for definitions of 'fine.' He'd been worried for the first week or two, seeing as she wasn't exactly in great condition when he'd seen her last, but her next heist happened right on time and seemingly without a hitch.

It was easy enough to dismiss the fact that she didn't stop by to chat then. It wasn't like they talked _every_ time they crossed paths, and though he missed her company, he didn't think much of it.

But now, two months later, he was sitting on a public bench and pretending to read the newspaper while he ate his second serving of flan and wondered what he'd done wrong.

There was, of course, the question of how much she remembered from that night—(slight and soft and _fragile_ in his arms, vulnerable and innocent in ways that couldn't be excused by the drug, and he'd never forgive himself for how fast his mind had jumped into the gutter over that)—and what she might have guessed happened.

He _hoped_ she knew him better than to think he'd done anything untoward, but he'd uncovered enough 'untoward' happenings in his line of work that he wouldn't blame her if she did.

That didn't stop it from being an utterly depressing thought, he mused as he discarded the cup and got up. Especially when she wouldn't stop by for long enough to clear up the maybe-misunderstanding.

Which was, of course, why he only managed to walk five steps when someone collided into his chest hard enough to knock him three steps back.

He saw blonde pigtails and red clothing as he peeled the person off of him, and was only mildly surprised to find that it was Panther.

"Sorry!" she gasped, then registered that it was him. Awkwardness spilled over her face, as vivid as if it had been held in a paint can. "Oh. Um."

It was unlike her not to watch where she was going, but the thunder of footsteps and shouting of her tail was much closer than he'd expected it to be.

Shit.

Nothing for it—he clamped a hand down on her shoulder and dragged her into the crack between the nearby buildings, fitting them both behind an air conditioning unit only just tall enough to hide them both.

There was barely any space at all, and he ended up pinning Panther against the wall, pressed deliciously tight against his front for the second (third?) time in recent memory as what seemed like an entire security force charged past.

It was a wonder anyone managed any maintenance here, he noted inanely as he tried not to glance, well. Down. That would be trouble no matter how you looked at it (ha). The way her body felt pressed flat against his from was already trouble enough.

They both held their breath as the crowd flooded down the street, not stopping to check the nooks and crannies as they went. _Sloppy._ What was the target paying these people for, anyway—

His ears picked out one set of footsteps slowing down outside their flimsy shelter, and cursed silently. _Famous last words._

He gripped Panther's shoulder again and forced her to drop down with him as the guard stepped up to the unit, arm clamped around her waist and other hand on her shoulder, shoving a leg between hers so she ended up straddling his thigh while his knee braced against the wall—trying to fold them as tightly into the space and cover as much of the bright red as he could.

She could still bolt, but he was _dead_ if they were caught together.

The guard was cursing a bit himself as he unclipped something from his belt. There was a pause, then another click, followed by the searchlight-bright flare of a flashlight inspecting the alley in roaming sweeps.

This continued on for a heart-stopping five seconds, but the light never touched their corner. Eventually the guard, only having found an empty dead end, uttered a grunt and shoved off, jogging to join his fellows.

_Sloppy._

What _was_ the target paying these people for anyway?

They finally breathed after the guard left, chests rising and falling in sync.

Very (_very_) belatedly, he realized that this position definitely wasn't helping his maybe-case, but drawing away and standing up now would make a little more movement and noise than he wanted to risk.

But maybe... maybe he didn't need to worry about it. Panther seemed to _melt_ on the exhale, somehow managing to get even closer as she curled her fingers in his lapels and tucked her head under his chin.

Which was somewhat baffling, considering context. He desperately wanted to ask, but conversations would be a bad idea right now.

It was a small eternity of straggling footsteps and synchronized breathing, but after a few minutes, the noise had faded enough that it was alright to stand.

"Long time no see," he murmured as he eased back.

That got her to stiffen again. A glance down revealed that decolletage he'd been avoiding and a shame-faced grimace. "Aheheh... Y-Yeah. Miss me?"

"Of course."

She froze, every muscle stiffening, then looked up at him with wide eyes, an oddly vulnerable sort of shock softening her mouth.

That was an odd reaction.

He tilted his head. "...Was it something I said?" No point in beating around the bush.

She blinked once, twice, the skin under the bottom edge of her mask darkening. "Huh?"

"To make you avoid me," he elaborated, trying to identify the expression on her face. He couldn't put a pin in why, but she looked... _saved,_ somehow.

The awkwardness and fluster and guilt and tentative hope in her shock were adding up into _her_ thinking she'd offended _him_ and had been avoiding him out of embarrassment, but for the life of him, he couldn't place anything that would make her think that. Not even Makoto at her most self-conscious would have shut down like this over any of the interactions he could remember, and as far as he could tell, Panther had shanked her sense of shame in a back alley long ago.

It just... didn't make sense.

"No!" she squeaked, right on cue, but then she whispered, "You... you missed me?" like she couldn't quite believe it, and _fuck_ if her surprise didn't make him want to hit something, take her home and wrap her up in blankets and bubble wrap, _kiss her_ until that look went away for good.

Unfortunately, that surge of protectiveness mixed with the rasp of her voice was hitting him in other, uncomfortably tingly places. He forced himself to look way with a cough, praying she hadn't felt the way his pulse had stuttered over that.

"Two months," he informed her, shooting for 'dry' and mostly getting there with only the slightest crackle in his voice.

"...Oh," she breathed at length, still sounding much too thrown at a basic facet of _friendship_ for comfort, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

At least, not right now.

She followed the sigh with a shaky giggle. "I... missed you too."

(Her voice was a little brain-melting under normal circumstances, but the way she said _that_... Gngh.)

He swallowed down his reaction and forced himself to breathe. Resting a hand on top of her head, he said, "So you'll come around again?"

"Uh-huh," she promised with an unfairly pleased smile, pushing into the contact like a kitten. (God, why was she so _cute?_)

"Good," he said, then stepped back, indicating the street with a nod. He needed to get back before they started looking for him.

She raised her hand in a shy wave, the disappointment in her eyes almost enough to make him stop and definitely enough to make him reconsider, but he conceded to necessity in the end.

Not a second too soon either—he'd just rounded the corner when he found a woman in uniform heading his way with a determined scowl. He met her halfway and let her lead him back the way she'd come, back to the security headquarters, now breathing easier than he had in ages.

* * *

**Robber**

* * *

He'd missed her.

He'd noticed her absence and hadn't liked it and _wanted her back._

That strangling _terror_ bubbling in her gut had only gotten so much worse, because she could have avoided him until these feelings died an ugly death—or, if they didn't, at least she wouldn't be dealing with all those temptations that were involved in being around him—but he _wanted to see her again_ and she couldn't turn him down if she tried.

(And he... _missed_ her? It was a foreign concept. An utterly strange (not bad, but strange) thought to know that there was someone out there who felt that sharp ache of separation over her. Who was happier with her around than not, or at least enjoyed her company enough to tell her to her face he wanted to keep it.)

But he was a cop. And she was a criminal. A criminal with a record over a mile long.

(Okay, maybe not _that_ long, but if all the papers in her file were laid out end-to-end in one straight line, they'd stretch pretty damn far.)

There was no possible way this could end well. Just... none. She might be maybe a little in love with a slightly corrupt, definitely unscrupulous, _painfully kind_ detective, and there was nothing she could do about it.

He wasn't going to let her get over it. Even if _he_ didn't take her in, any of those people he worked with would be happy to. For all appearances, he didn't even seem interested in having any romantic relationships at all, much less one with a glorified street rat.

Romeo and Juliet was only romantic when Romeo liked Juliet _back,_ dammit.

(...Well, liked her back in a more-than-platonic way.)

(Detective Kurusu had missed her missed her _missed her._)

She had two weeks—two weeks of preparation for her next heist, swallowing the scream sitting high in her throat and ignoring her impending (fully arrived) doom looming over her head like Tokyo Skytree (or the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building or Burj Kalifa or Taipei 101)—before she had the opportunity to talk to him again.

Which, of course, she had to take, because he _missed her._

Predictably, she spent the whole time barely focusing on the conversation as she tried not to sound as breathlessly flustered as she felt.

(Had he always sounded so _warm?_ It was doing things to her heart. And her knees. And her belly.)

She gave in and called Shiho that evening after six years of keeping her distance for her old friend's sake, which met with a lot of very uncharacteristic shrieking that ended in tears and the exhausted advice of, 'just jump him and get it out of your system.'

Ann had told her that she didn't think it worked like that (not to mention that it was kind of hopeless in the first place), to which Shiho had sniped, _alright, jump him and then marry him—and if you don't invite me to the wedding, I'll track you down to the ends of the earth so I can hit you._

Neither of which were very helpful, but Shiho made her promise to call again _within the week or so help her,_ so it wasn't a total loss.

Somehow, after conversational practice with Shiho (and the indirect reminder that she really should just give it up), her next conversation with Detective Kurusu went slightly better, and so did the next, and by the fourth, she'd somewhat regained her equilibrium, though there was no containing the fluttering sigh when he smirked at her just right.

(She was an open book and she knew it. Forget relationships; forget how incredibly stupid it already was for them to be on good terms at all, much less sleeping together; the worst part of all of this was that he didn't seem to be physically aware of her at all. While it was very evident that he was _fond_ of her (and that was going to _kill her_ one day, she swore), his gaze almost never strayed below her collarbones.

Between that lack of interest and the casual protectiveness he seemed to have for her, he seemed to have relegated her to the little sister-zone.)

(Sometimes life was unfair and the guy you were (oh geez) _in love with_ only ever looked at your face and never your assets. That wasn't a problem Ann had ever thought she'd have, but here they were.)

In a way, it was almost better that he didn't notice her in that way when she wanted him so badly. It sure had its advantages, anyway.

She knew he wasn't a person who was free with his personal space. It was one of the things she'd noticed about him in those initial assessments and in their slew of meetings after: how little he seemed to initiate or invite (or even participate in) physical affection.

And yet he'd done it with her, comforting gestures and bracing hugs, and had done it so casually she was fairly sure he might do it again, given the chance.

She hadn't gotten close enough to touch him in any of these new conversations, and she couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not. She _craved_ it from head to toe, craved his hands all over her, the presence of his weight and strength that she'd only had horribly tantalizing tastes of, the heat and proximity and affection, that strange shivery want-it-need-it-have-it bloom of pleasure that settled and unsettled everything inside her all at once—but she was also a little worried about what it might do to her health.

His voice alone was enough to melt her into a little puddle; would she even _survive_ him touching her, much less the way she hopelessly, desperately wanted him to?

Signs pointed to 'no.'

Reality, on the other hand...

* * *

It was just as she was leaping the electrified fence around the warehouse containing her latest mark that one of her pins slipped.

A bit of explanation: while the zippers on Panther's suit were decoratively placed, they were still fully functional. They made getting in and out of the vinyl possible—but a little _too_ possible when you spent as much time as Panther did leaping between rooftops and squeezing through air vents.

Ergo, 4cm long curved steel pins threaded through the backs of the tabs and into flat loops on either side of the zipper. They worked pretty well most of the time, often enough that it had failed only one or two times before.

Unfortunately, today marked the third.

A _zrrpt_ and a shock of cold air and a painful yank on the left side of her chest had gravity catching her off guard as her heel slipped and skidded over the concrete, sending her tumbling down.

She clamped a hand over her suddenly-freed breast and staggered to her feet, her armor unnervingly lose and rubbing against her skin in all the wrong ways as she moved. Security hadn't realized she'd been in and out yet, so she threw herself into one of the warehouses to fiddle with her suit.

Upon inspection, she found that the pin had slipped, bent at an angle just odd enough that it couldn't be put back. She should probably count herself lucky that she still even had it, she thought as she zipped the zipper back up and tried not to breathe too deeply.

Not that that helped too much, given that it was basically functioning as her bra, so she ended up holding the tab between the last two fingers of her left hand as she attempted to bend the pin back into shape.

Which was how Detective Kurusu found her about thirty seconds later, entering the building at an oddly urgent jog. "Panther! Are you okay?"

He actually looked... almost _alarmed_ as he rounded the corner she'd tucked herself behind, that alarm giving way to equally visible relief when he found her standing there unharmed.

She felt her cheeks tingle with embarrassed (pleased) heat. Little sister-zoned or not, it was... _nice_ to be worried about. _"I'm_ good, but my suit..."

Maybe she should ask why he was there, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd been on stakeout at the time of her heist. Usually he just 'miraculously' slept right through them, but apparently he'd been close enough (and awake enough) to see her fall this time.

Ugh. _Embarrassing._

"Your suit?"

Careful to keep the material as close to her skin as possible, she flipped over the top seam and showed him the empty loops. "The pin holding up the zipper slipped."

Detective Kurusu went unnaturally still.

She showed him the pin. "I dunno how, but it got bent and now I can't get it through the hoops." When he didn't seem to have anything to reply to that, she tugged at the zipper and sheepishly went on, "And, well, I can't let go if I want to keep my clothes on, so I'm kiiiiinda stuck like this."

He hummed neutrally, impassive.

Why she'd expected anything else, she didn't know, she thought dolefully as she tried (and failed) once again to fix the pin. Fingers aching from having a thin bit of metal repeatedly dig into them very hard, another thought struck her. "Hey, are you good with your hands?"

The question earned her an oddly extended silence. "Very good," he eventually answered, just dry and flat enough that Panther got the feeling she was missing a joke somewhere.

She held the pin out to him. "Think you could bend this back into shape?"

He took it from her. "What shape is it supposed to be in?"

"Kind of a... curve..." she said, trying to draw it in the air before realizing that that was pretty useless. "Well, just... look, I guess."

She gestured him over and tugged the seam back into place. "It's supposed fit as, um, close to the... as close to _me_ as it can," she fumbled, her tongue feeling clumsy and her face hot.

He paused for a moment to study the seam, then held the pin up next to it while Panther tried to keep it as close to the curve it needed to be in as she could manage and fought not to look any more flustered than she already did.

Not that she really needed to be embarrassed, given that _this_ was what it took to give her chest a second glance.

...That wasn't a very comforting thought, though.

He pulled it away and gave it a few deft tweaks, held it up to her chest again, compared, then repeated the process, idly wondering, "How does it stay up?"

"The suit?" she said as she watched him work, only feeling a little guilty about the way her stomach clenched pleasantly at the movements. "Friction, mostly."

His fingers paused, suspending the inadvertent spell, then kept going without comment.

"Well, friction and boning," she was forced to concede.

His fingers stopped.

"...Boning," he repeated with the cadence of a question but no tone whatsoever.

"Lots... and lots of boning," she sighed, making a face as she remembered the long weeks of sewing and resewing and resewing rigid plastic into the vinyl of her suit. "I can't tell you how long it took me to get it right. Either it was so stiff it popped right out or so soft it didn't help at all."

Detective Kurusu opened his mouth, then shut it, then opened it again to say, "Right."

Panther went on, half to fill the silence and half because she was caught up in memory lane, "And even once I found the right gauge, I had to keep experimenting to find the right style. It's useless if I can't even move, y'know? That defeats the whole purpose." She let her head drop to the side, staring at the far wall behind him. "Boning stuff is hard. Like, really _really_ hard. Way harder than you'd think it would be."

"...You don't say."

"And the fails were, like, super fails, to be honest." She poked her side where the bottom of the lattice required to support her chest rested. "I fell asleep in one of them and couldn't even get out of bed the next day. That one _really_ worked me over. Lesson learned!"

His eyes had gone glassy at some point when she wasn't looking, and he took a moment to blink that away and clear his throat before he said, "Indeed," and with one final tweak, handed her the pin back.

A wistful sigh sat in her throat as she took the pin, sad that the show was over, and then started threading it through the zipper tab.

Or, well, trying to. This was much harder to do with her gloves on than she'd thought it would be.

She was just about to consider taking her gloves off when Detective Kurusu unceremoniously tugged the pin from her fingers and tried to thread the tab himself, knuckles pressing into her breast proper as he pulled it away from her chest and sending an electric _shock_ through her from scalp to groin.

She felt more than heard herself emit a tiny _meep,_ and a semi-hysterical corner of her mind pointed out her transition from 'human' to 'horny squeak toy' as that little pulse of happy awareness between her legs had transformed into a full-on aching throb in an instant. Her whole face absolutely _burned_ when his own gloves dragged over her suddenly hypersensitive skin.

She was peripherally aware that he, too, was having trouble threading the tab (it really was meant to be done by touch), but that was massively overshadowed by the rub of cloth against her chest and the warmth seeping through it, the stimulation tightening her nipples until they ached.

He _tsk_'d under his breath, an uncharacteristic admission of frustration, and let go. She missed the touch instantly.

But instead of giving up and letting her have the pin again, he just transferred it to his other hand. He then grasped the glove in his teeth by the tips of the first two fingers and _pulled._

She had a vague memory of him doing that before, but now she was much (much _much_) more alert this time around. Really, like, _way_ more alert. Heart-in-her-mouth, knees-shaking, maybe-kind-of-more-than-a-little-bit-wet alert.

How was it possible that something that small was _that hot?_

Her eyes were still fixed on the glove empty dangling from his mouth, hypnotized by the bob of his throat, so she missed him reaching for her until he grasped the tab of her zipper and gently pulled it up again.

She had a moment of profound disappointment that he hadn't yanked it right down to her hip, and then a second, much less profound moment of 'horny squeak toy'—it was skin against skin when he started threading the pin through the tab this time, skin-warm and skin-rasp and the unpadded pressure of his knuckles, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop the pressurized noise high in her throat.

There was a certain level of innuendo that did not escape her as she watched him feed the pin through the almost-snug channel in the back of the tab, then through the steel divot in the seam on the other side, then rocking it back to slip into the second divot on the side of entry. He smoothed his thumbs over the edge to make sure the pin was balanced, then laid it against her breast with one last accidental brush of nails, leaving her hot and bothered and tragically much more dressed than she'd started out.

Her nipples still begged for attention. The situation below her waistline was even hotter and wetter and emptier than before. Her heart was going to beat right out of her chest and get caught in that zipper he'd oh so kindly fixed for her.

He still had no idea what he did to her, and after re-donning his glove, he was right back to watching her face with fond, impassive interest and mild apology—which was utterly humiliating in itself because every iota of her embarrassment was probably written on it right now.

She wanted to _die._

She floundered through half a dozen half-formed responses interspersed with incoherent noises while he just... _watched her,_ looking more and more amused by the attempt.

She might have hated him if her emotions weren't otherwise occupied.

Eventually she managed a mostly comprehensible, "Thank you, I-I owe you... one?" while the heat in her face died down from 'bonfire' to 'slightly smaller bonfire.'

_Damn him_ for looking so entertained. "I'm sure you'll make it up to me."

There was nothing suggestive about his tone, but still her mind happily supplied her with quicksilver images of grasping at his sheets and spreading her thighs as far apart as they would go, then of what it might feel like to be on her knees with his beautiful fingers tangled in her hair and equally pretty cock halfway down her throat—

"Of course I will!" she blurted, her voice coming out thick and strange.

Not all, but some of his amusement gave way to mild surprise.

_"I mean!"_ She scrambled for something, _anything_ that didn't imply sexual favors, and came out with, "I-If you ever need anything boned, I'm your girl."

He blinked, that not-smile going stilted and sideways. "I'll... keep that in mind."

She barely noticed it as she barreled on, mouth guided more by her fluster than any form of higher reasoning. "I mean, I've never actually tried to make a real steel-bone _corset cage,_ b-but I can bone a dress just fine! O-or a, you know, catsuit... Or a bra! I'm pretty good at boning bras..." She trailed off and covered her face with one hand, praying desperately for a sinkhole or a meteorite or an apocalyptic event or _something._ "...Why did I even _say_ that..."

Detective Kurusu folded his arms, and after a beat, interrupted her mildly suicidal longings with, "To clarify, when you say 'boning', you mean... corset-making."

That wasn't the question she'd anticipated, all told.

"...Yes?" she answered uncertainly, raising her head.

The expression on his face was unlike any expression she'd seen on it before—not least of all because it was blatantly visible and not subtle at all. "...Ah."

She studied that expression closer—just because it was _visible_ didn't mean it was easily deciphered—then, when he didn't care to elaborate, she said, "What?"

He hummed, brow smoothing and mouth relaxing as the look was smothered beneath good humor. "Nothing."

"Really?" she wondered, feeling her blush slowly drain away at the thought of not being the only flustered one here. "It didn't look like 'nothing.'"

He studiously avoided her eye, something like chagrin coloring his humor. "I'm feeling a sharp ache in my conscience," he said dryly, more to himself than to her.

Which was probably why it only left her more confused.

"Your... 'conscience'?"

He glanced back at her, gaze flicking down only just slightly as he said, "...Something like that."

Panther would have continued down that line of questioning if another thought hadn't occurred to her. "Wait... What did you _think_ I meant by... by... 'bone-... -ing'..."

The crook at the corner of his mouth and the laughter in his eyes mocked her with, _well, what do __**you**__ think?_ as a parade of her own words marched through her head.

Her blush, which had faded down to merely 'warm', returned with a fiery vengeance.

Detective Kurusu weathered her ensuing mortified meltdown with aplomb.

(And yet she knew that she would never, ever, ever return from this. She just wouldn't.)

Somewhere between the sixth and eighth fervent denial, her voice started petering out as she realized that all she was really doing was cementing her status as 'little sister.'

She finished with a wordless groan and rubbed her face. "I-I really wasn't thinking about that, you know."

He replied with a mild, "I know," instead of anything that would fluster her further, which was the biggest sign that she'd lost, really.

...Well, for definitions of 'lost.' She wasn't quite ready to throw in the towel yet, even if she really should.

She planted her foot into the dead center of her sense of shame and gave it a hefty shove as she took a step forward and swayed into his space. "But... you know..." She slipped her hands over his chest (_mmm_) up to fold in his lapels and pull herself close, close enough that she could breathe the rest of the sentence over his lips: "...I don't really mind if you were."

And then she kissed him.

Some part of her had expected to get out of this unscathed, sort of like the first time she'd punched someone out and expected it not to hurt, and she was just as wrong now as she had been back then. She felt like she'd kissed a live wire, a defibrillator, an adrenaline shot for all that the contact had lasted a second and a half.

Skin-warm and skin-rasp and she _felt it_ in every single cell in her body, the feeling of his mouth branded into her memory as she let go and stepped back, hoping the sly smile she hitched up didn't look as shaky as it felt.

Detective Kurusu looked like she'd just knocked him flat.

If she had more experience in this, if she knew how to play this game, she'd know whether to stick around and see if she could push her advantage or just consider her work done for the day. She didn't, though, so she threw her dart at the safer option and hoped for the best.

She chirped, "Later!" winked at him, and bolted.

(And not a moment too soon; she was only at the boundary line when the alarms started sounding.

Ordinarily this would be the point at which she hoped for a good fence for her latest acquisition, but right now, all that was on her mind was whether he'd remember that moment in the ways it really counted.)

* * *

**Cop**

* * *

Akira needed to get laid.

There was no other excuse for why a blush and a smirk and a string of unintentional innuendo (_I don't really mind if you were_) and a peck (hot breath and damp lips, the press of her body sparking an instant addiction) and a tantalizing hint of what it would be like to have her in his hands (so soft and so, _so responsive_) and a visual for cleavage almost bursting out of a slipping zipper—there was _no excuse_ for why all that was getting to him like this.

He hadn't even had this many wet dreams when he was an actual teenager, intrusive thoughts blending into dallying fantasies blending into dreams that had him waking up sweat-slicked and craving the taste of her in his mouth like nothing else. He was tense enough that the people around him actually _noticed_ it.

The sheer amount of time he spent dragged back into thinking about her was _cutting into his work ethic;_ not noticeably, thankfully, but he was catching himself spacing out over papers and between phone calls just wondering what she'd think about it all, whether her mouth would set in that steely work-ready little line after she heard the victim's testimony and how heavily she'd sigh after the last signed NDA was filed, what kinds of noises she'd make as she melted dramatically all over his desk.

So, the plan was to drag Ryuji to a bar and find someone to help him scratch the itch so he could finally let go of this borderline obsession and return to being a normal human being.

("Uhh, but weren't you sleeping with that hot thief chick?" Ryuji had (belatedly) wondered as they walked to the establishment five minutes from Akira's apartment.

"I do actually have more moral fiber than that," Akira had drawled, mildly offended but not especially surprised.

Ryuji hadn't said a thing, and Futaba, who'd tagged along, had just smiled for long enough to make a point, then changed the subject.

And _that_ was what he got for sticking with the same six friends for a decade and a half.)

The bar was a flop. The most interesting thing there was a special on a collection of novelty wines that he and Futaba worked through while Ryuji gave up on wingmanning and had his own fun, and Akira finished off the evening by piggyback carrying Futaba back to her apartment instead of anything remotely in the neighborhood of his initial aims.

She got clingy when she was drunk, which usually meant good endurance training for him, but this time just left him with a little too much time to think about how little it affected him in comparison with carrying Panther, which was tragically fitting after an evening of wondering which wines Panther would have liked best (the sweetest ones, probably), and what kind of drunk she was (passionate or cuddly or emotional or flirty or...) and whether she even drank at all (probably not, he'd eventually decided) and—

Yeah.

Unfortunately, the second trip went much the same as the first, except instead of a drunk Futaba, he had a Yusuke. A Yusuke who may have accidentally ingested dubious substances and gotten high as a kite or may have been totally sober and simply Yusuke-in-a-Mood. Akira had followed him out, still bored and somewhat worried for his friend's safety, and had spent the following hour or two standing awkwardly by in a dimly lit art store isle while Yusuke waxed poetic over oil pastels.

(Panther would probably be able to rattle off the most famous (and expensive) works done solely in oil pastel, and their current owners too. She might be bored with the art store in itself (hadn't she made her first friend by virtue of her artistic talent being just that lacking?) but she probably would have found plenty to occupy her in Yusuke's winding ramblings, and then Akira would be able to watch her pouts and blinks and stuttering confusion and the creeping realization that Yusuke just existed on a slightly different plane of existence, which was always amusing to behold, no matter who it was, but on a face as expressive as Panther's...)

It had taken some coaxing and negotiating, but eventually Yusuke was well-hydrated, mostly fed, and secured in his futon with only one small box of those oil pastels laid next to his head, and Akira was... once again out of a date.

Dammit.

The third attempt lacked any dubiously inebriated friends to look after, yet also lacked anyone who held his interest for more than two seconds, so he ended up entertaining a few conversations so Ryuji could relax on the wingmanning front, ended up with another few numbers for the information network, and walked home in the company he came with.

"So, uh... why did you want to get laid again?" said Ryuji as they walked.

"Why does anyone?" Akira replied as he flipped through the games app folder on his phone, trying to decide which of the timed games were his top priority.

"Uuuusually people who want to get laid don't look that bored."

"It's just my face."

"Even your bored face was bored, dude."

Well, _he_ thought he did a good job at pretending to be interested. No one else seemed to have noticed.

"Seriously, that last one, Tsurumi? She was practically crawlin' into your lap." The look Ryuji shot at Akira then implied that that was Akira's fault, somehow

Akira blinked. "She was?"

Ryuji's half-scowl got even more judgemental. "She was really obvious."

"Oh." Well, now he knew how to approach her for information. Actively seducing people was _work,_ but sometimes he got lucky and they did that work for him while he reaped the benefits. Lust-loosened information was some of the more reliable information out there.

"Seriously! How did you miss that?!" Ryuji demanded, gesturing his irritation wide.

(Because she hadn't been flaunting at a distance and so responsive she melted at a touch, not painfully skittish _or_ oddly upfront, none of those jumbled mixed signals that spelled out a kind of innocence that the darker side of his consciousness was dying to ruin.

Akira's standards appeared to have been rewired when he wasn't looking.)

"Are you _sure_ you're not fucking, uh... what was it... Panther?"

"I'm very sure," said Akira, in the voice of a man who had spent far too many mornings sorting out where reality ended and the honeyed dreams began before hauling himself into a cold shower.

"And... why weren't you, again?"

"Because she's..." He felt himself frown as he searched for the right word, aimlessly scrolling back and forth through the games folder without seeing any of them. "...delicate."

Ryuji stopped walking. "'Delicate'."

"Maybe not delicate, per se," Akira allowed, automatically slowing to a stop and ending up only a meter or so ahead. "But she's more vulnerable than she wants to let on. I'm not a monster."

On glancing up, Akira found that Ryuji was a little more thrown than an unexpectedly human master thief warranted. "What?"

"So... you _want_ to fuck her, but you're not," he checked, gears turning behind his eyes.

Akira tipped his head in concession.

"And you'd rather walk _Yusuke_ home than one of those ladies, even though you literally came just for that."

"It was a good thing I did," Akira muttered, like that was any kind of defense. This was starting to sound uncomfortably like a courtroom debate. "Otherwise he would have bought out the store."

Ryuji ignored that. "Because you thought everyone who _wanted_ your ass was boring."

Akira declined to answer.

"Because they weren't her."

...He was only half-wrong when he put it like that.

"They didn't need help being boring," was what he said aloud, because he wasn't quite ready to admit that just yet. It came out much more defensive than it had sounded in his head.

"You _never_ think people are boring, dude."

"It's not like I _ignored_ them," he said, now dangerously close to 'sulky'.

Ryuji ignored that, for his part. "And your face has, like, real feelings on it!"

_Urk._

Case made, Ryuji looked nauseatingly smug. "They have a name for this, you know."

Akira shot him a dour look. "Do tell."

"Ask Makoto," was all said Ryuji, snickering and clapping Akira on the back with stinging force.

"Don't touch me," he grumbled, the protest about as ineffectual as he thought it would be—Ryuji took that to mean he had full permission to pull Akira into a side-hug for a friendly shake.

"By the way, she wants your help with ring shopping," Ryuji breezed right on, the abrupt subject change to match the way he dragged them off balance with his grip, even if both of them were more sober than not. "Apparently she _finally_ figured out that Eiko ain't gonna marry herself."

Akira woke up his phone, which had fallen asleep during his distraction, and immediately fired off a text to Eiko to the tune of, _So what do you think of marriage?_

"..._Dude."_

"Hm?" said Akira, reading Eiko's instantaneous reply of, _Dream on__,_ which was quickly followed by, _How desperate r u?_

_Don't sell yourself so short. You're a wonderful woman._

_Fuk u__,_ Eiko texted eloquently while Ryuji rubbed his forehead. _U kno thats not wht i ment__._ Then, _So whatd u want__._

"I think it was supposed to be a surprise," Ryuji sighed, letting go and giving Akira his personal space back.

_To know your ring size. Inquiring minds._

"You know she'd never ask her herself," Akira pointed out, counting the seconds until Eiko replied. It took five.

_Wait. WAIT._ Then, _DID MAKOTO SAY SOMETHING__._

"I try subtlety _once_ and this is what happens," Ryuji groaned. "Queen's gonna kill me."

"Subtlety?" Akira wondered, only half paying attention as he hit send on, _That's a secret._

Eiko replied before Ryuji did. _Ugh__,_ filled one small grey bubble and, _Ur the WORST__,_ filled a slightly larger one.

All he had to offer was a shrug emoji.

_Its 7._

"Never mind," Ryuji muttered from under a mask of harrowed regret. "My brutal murder's gonna be painful enough already."

"Suit yourself."

* * *

The particulars of that conversation were lost in the week following—one of Akira's resting cases had a 'breakthrough' (read: the real culprit got caught in a scandal big enough that any court case would _probably_ be too big to pay off the judge, and that chance was good enough that Makoto was willing to take a shot), which required the normal storm of paperwork as they shuffled it to another detective so they could keep Akira's name out of it. It'd be no good if he came out of this looking competent.

The detective they chose was fresh blood, but with enough skills to make Akira's progress look legitimate. Akira hoped the culprit didn't ruin her life too badly for it; they could use more minds like that on the force.

During that flurry, Eiko and Makoto individually decided to have their meltdowns about their impending engagement at him, which were his just desserts for ruining the surprise, he supposed.

(Although, no lie, being privy to two competing marriage proposals was _incredibly_ entertaining and he was betting against himself for who would pull it off first. It was just a bit much to add on to organizing his files and holding his breath through official meetings and pretending that no one actually knew what was going down, as one did.)

And then, you know, Sae had kittens over her cat having kittens—_how_ had Akira ended up being the only one with any idea how to take care of cats around here, he didn't know, but listening to Sae panic on the other end of the line, he didn't have the heart to give her grief for it—and he'd just hung up the phone (_Call duration 3:07:23_ flickering up at him for a second or two) when he got another call letting him know that, _by Jove, Panther's done it again!_

Not that the caller actually said 'by Jove', but it would have lent a certain amount of ambience to the scene, you had to admit.

It wasn't that he'd _forgotten_ to keep track of her, exactly, and he _was_ in the area for that express purpose, but the reminder felt like a system shock.

Was he ready to see her again? No, no he was not.

(Would he ever be? ...Maybe, but also probably not.)

Not that that really mattered—either he'd see her or he wouldn't, and he'd pretend to do his job either way—but that didn't stop his stomach from fluttering on the drive over.

The site was a casino with a rather expansive basement which also happened to be rather dark, and he found himself spending most of his time searching it trying to talk himself out of flinching when (if, if, _if_) Panther showed up.

"Here, kitty-kitty," he murmured semi-ironically as he rounded another corner, reduced to _babbling_ to ease his nerves—

And found himself abruptly on the ground, cool cement against his cheek and his wrists pinned behind his back by a powerful grip, someone resting their weight hard on the small of his back.

"Stay down," the person—Panther—growled.

Well, that took care of the flinching problem.

"Oh no," said Akira, shifting his head so he could speak clearly. "I've been caught."

"Oh!" said Panther, and the way her professional badassery instantly melted into startled kitten at finding out it was him was its own set of problems really. Her grip on his wrists relaxed. "I didn't see you there."

He hummed neutrally. She wasn't moving and this position was starting to remind him of those rather... _thrilling_ times with Tae and collars and handcuffs and substances that might have been test medication or might have been aphrodisiacs, he'd never been privy to which she'd given him before it set in on his system.

(He really, _desperately_ needed to get laid.)

"What are you doing here?" Panther asked, unaware of his struggles.

"Looking for clues," he said mildly. He should probably push himself up, but this felt a little too good to summon the willpower to do so. "Footprints and such."

The cement was immaculate, but that was neither here nor there.

"Oh, well, good luck!" she chirped, wriggling off of him herself. He felt the loss instantly. "Want any help?"

"Mm..." he hummed again. The butterflies were back and he didn't approve. "Until backup arrives."

"Detective Panther, on the case!" She offered him a hand up and a brilliant smile. "Come on, partner. Let's go find some clues."

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed and accepted her help, brushing the wrinkles out of his clothes and shoving down the odd urge to kiss her knuckles, just to see whether she'd fluster or roll with it or both.

And then the lights went out.

_"INTRUDER FOUND ON THE PREMISES. ALL FACILITIES ON LOCKDOWN UNTIL THE INTRUDER IS CAUGHT."_

"Ohh, that's not good," Panther muttered, a mere ghost of pale hair and pale skin in the nigh nonexistent ambient light.

Akira concurred.

"Now what do we do?" Panther wondered, slightly concerned but mostly just curious.

Thinking about it, this was probably just another Wednesday to her. Akira felt a little silly for how much he'd just tensed up.

"Look for an exit," he decided, relaxing. The search would be easy enough to pass off as him simply feeling claustrophobic to any exasperated security personnel he came across, and he didn't much like the thought of leaving Panther to fend for herself, even if he knew she was perfectly capable of it.

"Yessir," she said, flippant and purring, and Akira abruptly remembered just how long it had taken him to get used to _that voice._

Dammit.

He decided that exercise was probably a good idea right now and picked a random direction to start walking in, Panther's stiletto heels click-clacking after him.

* * *

Fortunately, the underside of the casino provided enough dubiously placed twists and turns that avoiding the search parties was easy enough—and led to some fairly incriminating sights. Akira's camera and notepad saw much more use than he'd thought they would.

Unfortunately, he was somewhat... _preoccupied_ (Panther kept up a steady stream of _sotto voce_ chatter, which would have been okay if only she'd had the voice of anyone else—the effort of trying to keep his brain out of the gutter listening to her was downright herculean) and he'd only had a general impression of the layout before he'd come down here, and Panther, who probably had the whole place memorized, seemed content to trail in his wake.

"Ooh, another dead end," she noted at the third locked door, somehow sounding even less concerned than she had for the first two.

He couldn't tell if that was good or bad. His pride was stinging enough already. "Do _you_ want to lead?"

"Nah," she said cheerfully.

"We'd get out of here faster," he pointed out, irritated.

"Yeah, but I just like walking with you."

That lack of shame of hers showed up in some very baffling places.

The blow to his ego and the warmth of her easy affection aside—"Then let's keep walking."

"Roger!"

She said it just loud enough that it bounced through the empty paths, and Akira's heart stopped.

Sure enough, there _was_ a search party within hearing distance; a clutter of _hey, did you hear..._ and _it was that way_ and _move move move!_ echoed back to them.

"Oops," Panther whispered.

Akira grabbed her wrist and started moving as fast as he could without making a sound, aiming for that one hall they'd passed with all the doors.

Panther kept up easily enough, though she had three strides to every two of his. He didn't notice she hadn't done a thing to nudge him in any particular direction until they got to the hall itself and she pulled him towards one specific door.

That door proved to be a maintenance corridor—somewhat ironic, considering that the entire basement was technically a maintenance hall—with plenty of tangled nooks and crannies and entirely climbable structures. And a lot of noise, he noted as something or other let off a hiss of steam in the distance and another thing rattled loudly down a hatch.

Very aesthetic. What were they using this stuff for, anyway?

There was a ledge around the corner, about two and change meters up, that looked like it led to another room. There was also a clutter of crates under it that looked too rusty for anyone reasonably sane to touch.

Obviously, that meant that Panther shook off his grip on her wrist and used them as a leg up, stepping to the lowest one and catching the lip of the half-floor to haul herself up in one smooth motion, about as enviably effortless as he expected.

Then she peeked over the ledge to fix him with an expectant stare.

...Well. He never claimed to have much sanity anyway.

He didn't go up the way she had (he sure as _hell_ wasn't flexible enough to manage that with any degree of grace), but instead tested and then climbed up the full stack, only just managing to get entirely on the platform as the door around the corner banged open.

Panther, who'd sat up and leaned forward to help him up, let out a little squeak when he pushed her down, both that and the thump of them going down covered up by a louder series of rattling clanks from somewhere above their heads.

He held his breath as the guard started nosing around the hall (one, alone, if he could stay hidden then Panther could take the guy out, as little as he liked the idea). He could feel, almost _hear_ Panther's heart pounding, the pulse of it fluttering her whole torso, her slow, shallow, painstakingly steady breathing brushing his ear.

The guard passed the ledge by entirely, and continued down the main passage without so much as a pause.

_Who trains these people?_ Akira wondered. Even a normal thief probably would have seen the opportunity in this ledge.

Still he didn't dare move a muscle as the guard's footsteps kept going for another few meters, then stopped at the next crossroads. Even through the background noise, he could hear the guard utter a noise of frustration before those steps did an about turn and beat doubletime back to the entrance.

The door slammed shut behind him, and Akira finally let himself breathe.

He pushed himself up to check on Panther and found that he was now pinning her to the floor, hands locked around her delicate wrists and holding them down beside her head.

...Whoops.

He cautiously checked her face, trepidation simmering in his gut, and found...

Innocently wide eyes and softly parted plush lips, her whole body completely lax, utterly trusting and unconcerned.

(A quicksilver-molten thought wondered just how far he could push before that innocence before it _snapped_—

Bad. Bad-bad-bad.)

She blinked at him, and he blinked back.

The awkward silence stretched on for one, two, three seconds, and then she said, "Has anyone ever told you that this is your best angle?"

Not directly, though due to... various reactions from various sexual encounters he'd never been under the impression that it was a _bad_ angle, just...

Panther was skittish.

He was coming to realize that skittish Panther would probably let him (and him _alone_) do whatever he wanted with her if he was gentle about it, and that...

That was a hell of a thought.

Emphasis on 'hell'.

He let go before he could go any further down that road (her arms stayed where he'd left them, a mildly confused pout on her lips, and oh, that really didn't help) and cleared his throat.

After a moment, Panther sat up too—though she did it with a sinuous arch that had him fighting the urge to clear his throat again—tilted her head with a smile that was halfway between satisfied and coquettish.

Right. So. Maybe it would help to remind himself that kissing her would lead down the deep dark road (ha) of losing her trust and his job and possibly his freedom also, not necessarily in that order.

Right.

No kissing her, and especially no pushing her down and making use of that terrible knowledge of how those zippers worked, or indulging in the softness of her body and the hitch of her breath; no pushing her down and making sweet love to her _or_ fucking her senseless, and absolutely no scooping her up and carrying her home like a goddamn _caveman_—

He half-wished Makoto were here to discretely grind her heel into his toes. Makoto was an excellent sense of errant common sense and decorum and unwanted reality.

(At the same time, something in him violently rejected the idea of sharing this moment with anyone else, and another part wanted to introduce the two of them—introduce Panther to _all_ of his friends. They'd get along so well, and then he really _would_ get to keep her keep her keep her...)

He breathed away the jumble in his head and tilted it towards the way they'd come.

The corners of Panther's mouth downturned slightly, but she nodded anyway.

* * *

Another two close calls and his nerves were frayed.

Panther, of course, _still_ wasn't bothered in the slightest, which was still making it worse—partially because he wasn't used to being at a genuine disadvantage and he was finding it a rather stressful experience, and partially because a relaxed Panther was a playful Panther was a flirty Panther, which meant _no end_ to the posing and purring and bedroom eyes.

It wasn't helping his blood pressure.

To say the least.

"This is exciting, isn't it?" she said airily, bright voice scrambling up his attempts to mentally map their progress.

She'd pushed herself up on a railing, kicking both heels up until they crossed at the ankle behind her derriere and arching her back into a perfect parenthesis, and Akira decided that checking his phone was a better use of his time than admiring the flawlessly full curve of her breasts were outlined by the scarlet catsuit and dark room.

'Better', of course, was subjective. He'd hate himself either way, though, so phone it was.

"That's one word for it," he acknowledged once he'd untangled his tongue, voice rough despite himself.

She looked back over her shoulder at him, eyes uncomfortably piercing, and said, "I forgot this is your first time. Bet this is even more exciting for you, huh."

The words would have been dismissive if not for her rueful tone, and she bounced away from the railing to companionably knock their shoulders together. The reassuring smile she shot him both did and very much _didn't_ soothe his nerves. "You're doing so good I forgot."

He hummed. "I live to please."

(There were many other contexts in which he would be much happier to please, though.)

"The early days are always rough," she said, more commiserating than pitying as they started walking again. "Man, the stuff I got into because I didn't know better..."

That was a strange, indirect reminder of just how _young_ she was. Uncomfortably young, considering how much experience she had in all the wrong areas. He didn't know exactly how young, but the math of almost seven years of high-profile thievery worked out to some chilling implications no matter how he looked at it.

"Once I tried to schedule a heist over my menstrual cycle, if you can believe that," she said, droll, like the way he talked when he told the story of how Ryuji had almost gotten arrested for shouting in a library, "and I got _in_ but then I passed out in the guy's master bathroom because I'd lost too much blood. That was a close one, huh? Lesson learned!"

Akira's steps faltered. _Pardon what now?_

"I got an IUD after that," she said sheepishly, arms winging idly by her sides. "Had to sleep on the streets for a while because I didn't have enough money left for both food _and_ a hotel, but it was _totally_ worth it."

Pardon, _what?_

She sighed. "Do you know how hard it was to find a doctor shady enough to give a teenager with no papers an IUD, but not so shady that they'd do anything else? I found some lady doctor in a back alley clinic eventually, but that was a big search. Three hundred thousand yen..."

(An old memory of Tae walking into his apartment with three hundred thousand yen and a scowl on her face, demanding he help her _find a goddamn charity_ floated through his mind. It had stuck because the Tae he knew never swore.

...Nah, couldn't be.)

"The Japan Family Planning Association should do that for free, you know," he said weakly, once he'd swallowed down the bile in his throat, and her mouth formed a perfect 'o'.

Socially inept in the least expected places and completely vulnerable to the slightest bit of affection of _any_ sort, but she sighed about very real risks of death like they were gas prices, brushes with human trafficking like schadenfreude-laden stories from high school.

...Maybe they were stories from high school.

As much as he didn't want to know... "How old were you again?"

She bit the corner of her lip in thought. Then she squinted. Then she started counting on her fingers. "A... little before I turned seventeen, I think? Yeah, that sounds right. It was in... September."

Fuck.

Then she faltered and drooped like a scolded puppy. "Oh no, I need to get it replaced this year, don't I." She sighed again, much deeper this time. "That'll be fun. Guess I'd better start saving up now."

"I'll pay for it," he said immediately. His stomach was churning in earnest now. "Seriously. Please."

General healthcare _should_ pay for it, but if she insisted on going the morally dubious route, then at least he could keep her from sleeping on goddamn _fire escapes_ this time.

She had the audacity to look surprised. "What? Oh no, don't worry, I'll be..."

He glared at her.

"...fine?"

"No objections."

Panther looked faintly alarmed. "Okay then."

That settled, they kept walking.

Fortunately, they didn't have many more areas to check, and it wasn't long before they found a passage that led to a storehouse on the other side of the lot.

Unfortunately, Panther seemed to be an endless well of morbidly humorous (read: just horrifying) tales. By the time they emerged into the storehouse (a quiet, open room with boxes stacked up on racks), Akira was pretty sure his hair was going to start falling out from indirect stress.

She'd just finished a story about having maneuvered her way out of a bad deal by letting herself get drugged, escaping to the roof of a moving vehicle, sleeping it off, then making away with three times as much as the offered fence, and Akira had long since had enough.

He took a moment to text Makoto and tell her where he was (might as well see if he could get her to come with the cavalry; it'd make his life easier), then picked out a stack of boxes to camp out on.

Instead of doing the obvious thing and checking the state of the doors, Panther took that as a signal to come sit down beside him, the curve of her spine braced against his bicep.

A silence fell.

Akira could feel her heart thumping through her back, the heat of her body seeping through all their protective layers, and she was—

Small.

He couldn't say she was _fragile_ in good conscience, not after hearing at length how breezily she treated incidents that would equal many years of therapy for anyone else, but...

Staring at the little hairs that escaped her pigtails and feathered her neck brought home just how _young_ she was.

She should be graduating college right now, but instead she'd been forced to grow up too fast in all the wrong ways while she stagnated in all the right ones. Death was a paltry sum but (or maybe _because_) she'd never had the chance to learn that people missed her when she was gone. The femme fatale act had been polished until it gleamed, but a simple pat to the head had her red-faced and melting. Her blithe social graces were founded on the assumption that everyone she met would hurt her, use her, discard her if they had the chance, and she wasn't even necessarily wrong to think that.

A sex kitten act, but the emphasis was on 'kitten.'

(Except then sometimes she'd look up at him with eyes that were as heated and hungry as they were innocent and curious and trusting, and the balance would jump to the other end of the scale so fast it made his head swim.)

He wanted to mess her up, wanted to be the one to bring her up to speed on just how _good_ love and sex could be, wanted to see that innocence crumble down and down until she'd never think of running again—and he wanted to protect the woman who'd grown up alone and forged herself in fire, protect the minx that flirted for defense instead of amusement, protect the girl who would still rather pay him back for a simple dessert than steal from anyone who didn't deserve it, even after all that.

He was pretty sure those wires had gotten crossed somewhere (gotten tangled up in a mess of hormones and fascination and borderline obsession), but he didn't know how to untangle them.

He'd never fully managed to turn his back on someone in need, he knew that about himself, but he'd never felt like it was a _kink._

Panther's head lolled back onto his shoulder, jolting him out of his repose.

He opened his mouth to remind her to stay awake, or maybe to get out before they came looking for him, but instead what came out was, "Do you ever think about giving it up?"

She pulled her head off his shoulder and turned so she could look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Hm?"

"Going straight. Getting a real job." He bit his tongue before he could say _settling down._

She stared at him for a second, then up at the ceiling for another contemplative moment, then dropped her head back onto his shoulder. "Yeah, sometimes."

"What's stopping you?" he wondered.

He expected something like _I like the thrill_ or _this is fulfilling work,_ but instead the fight seemed to bleed out of her all at once. "I mean, where would I go?" Her voice was painfully defeated. "I'm a wanted criminal all over the world. I don't have a legal identity anymore. I'm not even sure I know how to live a normal life now."

The last two words crackled, and something in Akira's chest seized.

"But, well, this isn't so bad." Somehow, her forced cheer just made it all worse. "I know it sounds _kinda_ bad, but those are just the heists that went south, y'know? I've been doing this for like... almost seven years? It's old hat."

For the first time, he realized just how desperately he wished it wasn't.

And yet he couldn't say a thing. If he pushed too hard, if he started _demanding_—

"I guess I do wish I had a place I could stay when things get dicey, though," she admitted ruefully. "It's hard to lie low in a hotel."

"Come to me," he said—commanded, really. He couldn't (god, couldn't) tell her to quit outright, but he thought about those weeks when he didn't know where she was, and about the sheer relief he'd feel if he knew she was just passed out on his couch the way all his friends ended up sometimes. "You can take the couch whenever you need to."

"I'm more than you're job's worth," she said, dry. "If you got caught..."

Almost dry. There was a breathless little _hitch_ there that made his stomach hurt.

"You're worth more than my job."

She jerked, sitting up and whipping her head around, eyes wide and vulnerable.

He met her gaze steadily. Makoto could keep him out of prison and Sojiro was grumbling about retirement and handing off the cafe to one of his 'kids' and Futaba had never been good with food service.

A funny little smile crossed her face as she processed his sincerity, then she dropped back against his shoulder with a huff that was more of a sigh than a laugh, sounding shaken.

"I'll... keep that in mind," she said, and her tone made it evident that she had no intention to ever take him up on it.

He clenched his jaw over a curse.

It wasn't like the feeling of helplessness was unfamiliar to him, but this was the keenest he'd felt it in a very long time.

The lull of conversation let that frustration simmer up to a half-boil by the time Makoto texted him that she was on the premises—itching hot under his skin and making his movements curt as he showed it to Panther.

(He was tempted, oh so tempted to not tell her, betray her trust and take her back in cuffs if that meant she wouldn't have to live like this anymore.

She'd never forgive him, and it wasn't like prison could hold her anyway. It would just be one more awful tale for her laundry list of sickening experiences.

Fucking _dammit._)

"Then that's my cue," she chirped as she stood up and stretched, the perfect arch of her back and sighing groan tinting his frustration into... something else.

He stood up, only partially in control of what he was doing, and when she went to flash him that selfsame smile, the one that kept slipping into his dreams, he cupped her cheek and pulled her in.

_She'd been the one to kiss him first,_ was his half-thought excuse as he caught a glimpse of a single blue eye going as wide as a dinner plate, the soft-warmed edge of her mask brushing his skin as the slip-slide of her lips wiped his mind clean of all else.

It was a real kiss this time, and he'd been right: she was so responsive he might actually die.

She was a jumble of gasps and hums and sighs and squeaks for every slow stroke of his mouth, the touch of his tongue, nips and teasing sucks getting her to shiver and squirm in place, her flush warming the fabric of his glove, and he'd known, he'd _known_ that it would be like this, but he hadn't had a clue what it would do to him.

_Be gentle, be gentle, be gentle,_ he had to be gentle because he could _tell_ that this was already about as much as she could take, but _oh, god..._

He managed to break the kiss... somehow—god knew how, that pulse of heat was _unbearable_ and it was actual _pain_ not to shove her against the structure and _devour her_—and found her glassy-eyed and blushing and just as startled and heated as he'd imagined she would be.

_"Oh,"_ she said softly, because apparently he wasn't far enough gone yet, then swallowed and exhaled another, "Mm..."

He forced himself to let go of her, let go of her face—he'd grabbed onto the corner of the crate without noticing and was gripping it so tight his bones creaked—and withdraw enough that she could take a step back.

For an achingly long moment, she didn't, and he was just about to lose his caution to the hurricane-strong wind when her eyelashes fluttered and she let out a long, slow breath.

Her heels click-clacked once, twice, three times as she drifted backwards, and then the doors at the far side of the warehouse rattled and someone shouted, _it's locked!_

It knocked most of the daze out of her and a fraction of the daze out of him, and she took a running hop and pulled herself up on top of the crate like it was nothing.

(He should have kissed her harder. That level of agility was just unfair when he felt like he'd fall down if he tried to move.)

There was a skylight he hadn't noticed until she started scaling the frame to get to it, forever awe-striking in her nimble grace.

He tore his eyes away and leaned back against the crate, scrambling together the tatters of his composure and schooling his features. Hopefully Makoto was with the inquisition so she could talk for him. He didn't trust his mouth at the moment.

She was. She was heading the inquisition, actually, which consisted of a scattering of officials and one of the junior detectives on the force.

"Did you see the culprit?" one of the officials demanded, and Akira really should know who the man was, but too many of his mental faculties were offline to summon the name.

Makoto caught his slightly helpless glance and sighed. _"More importantly,_ what are you _doing_ here?" She looked around at her group and signaled them to start looking around. "You're _supposed_ to be combing the basement. Panther is on the loose! And she should be in the basement! Are you just going to let her _get away_ with that necklace?"

Bless Makoto. He had no idea where he'd be without her cold-shower lectures and twin-level telepathy.

"I was feeling claustrophobic," he said, halfway between deadpan and guileless, and his voice only cracked a little bit.

Makoto rolled her eyes, taking a deep breath—and then froze, gaze pinned to the ceiling.

Shit. The skylight.

He glanced up just in time to catch the slightest flash of red disappearing from the corner.

Well, at least it had only been Makoto that had seen her. He didn't want to think about what would happen if—

Panther poked her head back in, grabbed the window frame, and looked directly at the two of them.

Makoto still stood frozen, and he couldn't bring himself to move a muscle either.

Panther just blew a kiss at them both, then pulled the window shut behind her.

The moment had somehow, some way gone unnoticed by the rest of the group. Makoto looked around, then shifted to stand beside him and called out, "I doubt she's here—if she found this place, she's likely already gone. We need to sweep back along the passage and join the search."

The police commissioner, being a woman who got what she wanted when she wanted it, got a flurry of agreements.

Again... enviable.

She waited until the last one had turned their back, then delicately wiggled her leg and brought her heel down on his toes _hard._

"Ow."

_"Detect_ more than just her _breasts,_ Detective," she hissed through her teeth. "What am I _paying_ you for?!"

Now that was unfair. If anything he'd ended up _detecting_ those _eyes_ more than anything else, that smile, all those vivid expressions, musical laughter and that rosy-hued chatter from someone whose world was at once so much brighter and so much _darker_ than his—

Wait.

_Ask Makoto,_ Ryuji had said. _By the way, she wants your help __ring shopping__,_ Ryuji had said.

...Oh.

Hormones and fascination and borderline obsession could all add up to—

_By the way, she wants your help ring shopping._

Read: _there's a solid chance you'll want to marry that girl._

—love. They could add up to... that.

Well. Shit.

Makoto sighed again, louder, over this slightly earth-shattering revelation.

"Never mind. Sleep with her, see if I care." She led the way back to the passage, and Akira trailed numbly in her wake. "Let's just go pretend to do our jobs."

* * *

**Robber**

* * *

It felt like playing with fire, this new relationship of theirs.

In more ways than one.

Stolen kisses that tasted like nothing but heat and want and left her distracted and aching for days no matter what she did, the electric hiss of danger-danger-danger prickling her scalp and baiting her breath, the guilt and shame that _burned_ in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought about what she was making him risk.

If this went south, she could be in and out like a ghost with nothing but heartbreak to her name, but he had a life. He had a career and friends and a _home,_ people who loved him as much as she did—

(People who posted pictures of him online where he looked relaxed and happy even through the deadpan, people who got their friends to nag him into coming to their social gatherings, people who named their kittens after him in honor of all the stress he gave them, people who shared their lives with him the way she never could...)

—and he might say she was worth more than his job, and even if that was somehow, unimaginably _true,_ it wasn't just his job that was at stake here.

And she was letting him risk it all because she was lonely, plain and simple.

(Letting him risk it all just to get those painfully brief tastes of intimacy, of warmth and want, things that were gentle and fierce and real and _there,_ and she'd been without for so, so, so _long._)

It wasn't like her to live with regrets, and even less like her to do things that she _knew_ she'd regret, but she couldn't step back, couldn't look away.

("Where's the problem?" Shiho had asked when Ann called her to vent. "I mean sure he's a detective, but it's not like you're underage or a criminal or anything. How much trouble could you get him into?"

_That_ had been an uncomfortable conversation of half-truths and no good answers. Shiho didn't tell her to stop this, and Ann hung up more unsettled than ever.)

And yet that all disappeared when she was around him.

Never once had he been _not_ happy to see her. The longer she spent around him, the easier it was to get that blank mask melt away into genuine emotion—even long before a kiss had ever been traded between them, he'd still _wanted_ to see her, eyes lighting up when he saw her and and voice reflecting amusement and... pleasure.

She hadn't seen it, hadn't _wanted_ to see it, had been too scared of what she'd find if she looked, but it was there.

He liked her. He liked listening to her, talking with her, flustering her and comforting her. Those kisses that left her mellow and charged and hot and weak-kneed and wet got more intense all the time.

There were reasons she didn't want to stop, and a solid chunk of them were tied to that. Being wanted was a powerful thing.

And yet, no matter how desperately she wanted to, she couldn't push it any further than this—stolen kisses and gentle embraces. Her body craved and _begged_ for more, but there was a limit to how much she wanted to expose either of them to that threat of discovery.

He could recover from a kiss, she thought, but getting caught with their pants down...

(Getting caught with him buried deep inside her, rocking in and out, in and out as he kissed her like he just couldn't get enough—)

_Getting caught_ would be a very bad thing that wouldn't end well for either of them. Even if _certain parts of her anatomy_ were convinced that getting cuffed and fucked by her favorite detective was all she needed in life, getting caught would be bad. Bad. It _would._

It helped (sort of, in certain ways) that he didn't seem to be nearly as affected by those kisses as she was. That eternal composure never wavered. Careful touches never lost control, never pushed. He seemed perfectly content to wreck her with barely a finger lifted.

If his lead never led to sex, she was going to _die,_ plain and simple—but there was safety in submission, even so. No need to think, no need to worry, she only had to feel.

It was Detective Kurusu, after all. If she was in his hands, she had nothing to fear.

Well, _she_ had nothing to fear.

And that was the whole issue right there.

* * *

She'd made it in and out of the target's home in record time, priceless gemstone in hand, and she gave it about twenty minutes before they realized anything was wrong. Security here was _lax._

What were they paying these people for, anyway?

It was dead easy to track down the stakeout car (a black and white police car this time, with the lattice between the front seats and back seats and everything), and when she dropped down into the alley it was parked in, she found Detective Kurusu dozing against the window frame.

Well, at least she knew exactly what _he_ was being paid for.

"Oh, officer," she sang softly as she approached. "Do you think you could help me?"

He hummed in a way that said he hadn't been dozing at all and, without opening his eyes, said, "Sorry, miss. I'm rather busy."

"Huh?"

"I'm on the lookout for a thief," he murmured sagely. There was a smile in his voice that had her breath catching. "I'm supposed to 'call in as soon as I see her.' I can't leave my post now."

_Ohhh..._

She stepped back, searching her boots and cleavage for that bright red cloth she wrapped around her knuckles when she needed extra padding or muffling, and found it coiled around her thigh.

Teasing it out, she approached him again, stooping down and leaning in until she could feel his breath on her exposed skin, then covering his eyes with the cloth, careful not to catch his hair in the knot she tied.

(She wished she could feel it, stroke it, pull his head into her lap on a chilly autumn day and just rest like that until nothing else in the world mattered.)

She couldn't do that, but she could do the next best thing—brush their noses together, then their lips, feeling him inhale a silent gasp and then stroke her cheek as he kissed back.

That was her downfall, as it always was.

The warmth of affection mixed with how awfully _sensitive_ her mouth could get when his was on it, tingling _awareness_ tugging her nipples and pooling from bellybutton to knees, the feeling nudging sighs and mewls from her throat as the kiss went on and on and on...

Eventually she had to break the kiss herself, because her knees were weak and that was making it hard to keep stooping like this.

"Hey," she breathed over his mouth and heard him swallow. There'd been something she was going to follow that 'hey officer' line with, something flirty and silly that would make him smile as he teased her back, but it was gone now.

He hummed, and Panther shivered at the feeling of it. "Hello, miss."

She maybe kinda sorta _loved_ his voice when it sounded like that, but it wasn't helping out with her weak knees.

When she didn't answer, he prompted, "Can I help you?"

Panther regularly staked her life on her ability to regain her senses in record time, but something about _this_ left her in a happy fog she didn't want to disperse.

Right now, that meant she followed up her quiet, "Yeah," with, "Come out here," instead of asking if he had any juicy new info or notable names for her to look into like she usually did, but, well. Small losses, great gains.

_Amazing_ gains, actually, because this now meant that she got a full-body embrace to go along with the very pleasant liplock, and she was free to melt all she wanted.

That persistent little ember of _need_ in her belly had colonized her whole abdomen, and the press of his body against hers, lean and strong and _tall,_ had all sorts of things melting. Those last vestiges of higher thought kept her from rutting against his thigh, because she was pretty sure she'd leave a wet patch there and that... would be bad.

For reasons she couldn't quite remember right now, but it would be bad. Probably.

_Oh_ how she wanted, though.

It was all clicky sucks and static shocks and bone-deep heat, the soothing stroke of fingertips down the curve of her spine and an arm that fit the curve of her waist.

The thought of leaving pulled something painfully taut in her gut, a whimper in her throat, so she tried not to think it. Much easier to her herself go limp and let him position her where he wanted—this time cupping the back of her head and guided her so he could lick into her mouth and slide their tongues together, and she felt herself moan, melt, cave a little more, hips shifting at the stimulus.

She wasn't sure how long it took for the kiss to break, but it was Detective Kurusu that broke it, tilting his head and then guiding her head away so he could drop his face into the crook of her neck, and pant hot, damp breaths over her exposed skin.

Which was her cue to start gathering her senses and get down to the _real_ business again, but this was a much more pleasant brand of business.

She inhaled deep and squeezed her eyes shut.

Twenty minutes before they realized something was wrong, fifteen before they remembered the detective and got close enough to worry about.

Right.

Even mentally unworking herself from this kind of hurt.

(The kind of hurt than came with stumbling out of bed too soon, her body begging her for _just five more minutes_ while she tossed her possessions back into her bag and left by eleven A.M.; the kind of hurt when the adrenaline wore off and she still had to pick up and run; the kind of hurt that came with tossing out a maybe-friend's contact information with the latest burner phone because she'd be dead if someone could keep track of her.)

(Detective Kurusu kept track of her whether she wanted him to or not.

The amount of sheer _relief_ that brought her was _insane_—for more than a few reasons.)

She'd almost caught her breath again and had started thinking about sliding out of his embrace when his arms tightened, pulling her tight against him again.

"Stay."

Her heart stuttered.

It was a herculean effort to make herself protest, but she managed it. "We... should..."

"Don't go," he whispered, raspy, almost _shaking,_ into the hollow below her ear—the tone and words and placement and admission of weakness alone would have gotten her, but he convulsively dug his trembling fingers into her hips as he said it, pulling her flush against his groin, and—

_"Oh."_

Her knees buckled for real this time, half her awareness going to what was definitely an erection digging into her abdomen and half going to the responding rush of _wet_ between her legs.

It wasn't like she had any point of reference, but it felt hot and hard and _big_ and a great many of her priorities rearranged themselves so _getting that thing inside her_ took the top spot.

Apparently all she'd needed was the right motivation, because it took about three seconds to work out the logistics of how to do just that, hazy mind or no, nipples aching and face flushing and her belly tingling with _need._

If she put her weight into it, it wasn't too hard to drag him, stumbling, to the other side of the back door. He acquiesced to being crowded and pushed into the bench seat, though his legs were too long to shut the door again without a struggle.

Once he was down, she slipped his phone out of his pocket and worked through his rotation of pins until it unlocked (to his faintly alarmed, _"Hey!"_), then found his timer app and set it for fifteen minutes.

(Thirty minutes total for security to realize what happened, get their shit together, and come looking, and another ten or so before they remembered the detective on stakeout. She'd already spent three on the run and four just clinging to him, and she didn't like cutting it too close.)

That done, she tossed it onto the flat space under the back window and set herself to finding some semi-effective position in this tiny backseat.

* * *

By the time they were panting in the afterglow, there were still minutes left on the timer.

The survivalist in her told her to get a head start and the romantic in her told her to ignore the first five rings, but the reality was that the time slipped through her fingers in a single sum as she stole kiss after kiss, and the timer itself left her startling and squirming off and away from him and zipping back up as it beeped loud enough to rattle (what was left of) her brains.

She was lucky there wasn't anyone around when she stumbled out of the car in a haze (her legs felt like particularly uncooperative jelly; how was she going to make an escape like this?), and couldn't resist ducking back in for one last heartfelt kiss.

"Love you," she murmured right before their lips met, but was too foggy to register what that cool gasp she tasted meant until much later.

That done, she managed to scrounge up enough adrenaline to leave more or less the way she came. Her limbs were all heavy and all she wanted to do was sleep (and cuddle—mostly cuddle), but she made it up onto the roof and then onto the next.

At which point she doubled over quivering and had to accept that getting caught because she'd been fucked silly (had fucked herself silly?) would be just _stupid_ and Detective Kurusu wouldn't be able to bail her out this time.

She backtracked to the last roof and found a relatively small indented ledge that could form a box if she pulled that stray sheet of plywood over it, and got in.

Even the competent security details didn't tend to comb nooks and crannies like this, and she could probably _actually_ sleep if she wanted to, though it would still be a bad idea. She'd be stuck for a few hours while they swarmed the streets and then retreated again, but that was fine. She needed the break.

And she had something very pleasant to think about in the meantime, even with the guilt that was starting to leak back in.

Sitting in a not-quite ball, she pressed her wrist down on her lower abdomen and sank against the wall. The burn in there, the mess getting all over the crotch of her suit, the taste of him still in her mouth—she let herself doze with those wonderful little proofs that _it had happened._

Sure enough, the clamor rose and fell in waves, the only one coming even close to her hidey-hole being the brass coming for Detective Kurusu.

...The brass, and Commissioner Niijima, who seemed to be on the scene to spot check her high school sweetheart.

(Panther wasn't quite _jealous_ of the Commissioner, but maybe she was a little jealous. Both for the obvious reasons, and for some less obvious reasons.

She and Detective Kurusu shared whispered secrets like those schoolgirls Ann had always envied in primary, and somehow that pill was just as bitter now as it had been back then.)

The following conversation wasn't especially noteworthy—more of the same old, _Did you see the thief?! Where did she go?_ except the Commissioner, who muttered the questions and barked the orders—but Panther kept half an ear open anyway. Better to know now if sensitive information had been spilled, rather than later.

It passed without incident, and most of the group scattered like dropped coins until there was only Detective Kurusu and the Commissioner left.

Then the commissioner said, "You can't keep doing this."

And Panther's blood ran cold.

"Hm?" said Detective Kurusu, much too blasé.

"Don't give me that. You smell like sex."

"You're smelling things," he replied, almost sulky, like a kid denied a treat after getting caught with their hand in the jar, not... _this._

"I... _I_ can look the other way and lie through my teeth," she said, frustrated and pleading. "But if any of those people had gotten any closer, they'd have smelled it too."

"Not like anyone's going to jump right to 'collusion.'"

"Not after just once," she allowed after a slight pause. Panther wondered if the Commissioner's jaw had been anywhere near as clenched as her own. "But I know you. You're going to drive this into the ground if someone doesn't stop you."

"Are you really one to talk?"

She went on as though she hadn't heard it. "It's not going to be 'just once.' It's going to be three, four, five times—_more_—until no one has any doubt in their mind about what's going on."

"...And?"

"You know the people I hire. I don't hire idiots."

"If they're not idiots, then they'll know not to talk."

The Commissioner exhaled sharply, and somehow, the sound soured Panther's stomach even further.

"You're saying that you can't even keep people under your direct employ quiet?" Bitter, snippy, too many words.

"I have power," the Commissioner agreed with forced calm. "But there are people out there with more. People who have a great deal to gain from you being incapacitated. And I..." She exhaled again, slower and softer. "I have a great deal to lose."

He didn't reply to that.

"And you... you know that, don't you. _You're_ not an idiot either."

"It'd be a shame if I was."

"You _know_ it's not worth it to either of us, so... why?"

There was a silence then, during which tears gathered in the corners of Panther's eyes and escaped one by one. All those precious proofs were burning like shame now.

"She's..." He trailed off, like Panther's entire heart wasn't suddenly riding on his answer. "Mm... You'd know, I think. You're about to propose to Eiko, aren't you?"

"That..." said the Commissioner, her voice upticking in surprise. "I think that's the first time you've brought up, or even _implied_ marriage... _ever."_

Said entire heart attempted to leap out of Panther's mouth for a variety of reasons.

"And yet that's what you're saying, instead of telling me it's impossible."

"Well... I suppose it's been two years already." The Commissioner still sounded faintly flummoxed.

A relatable feeling, if multiplied by hundreds.

"And you're sure this isn't just... a danger thing? A bad decision for the sake of a bad decision?"

"...Yeah," he said quietly. "I really am." Then, while the blood was pounding painfully loud in her ears, "She's... you'd know why if you met her."

Another silence fell, not that it helped Panther process what she'd heard—was hearing.

"Alright, fine," the Commissioner eventually sighed. "I'll trust you on this. I won't forbid you from ever seeing her again and telling you to go find some nice, _law-abiding_ wife in a bar somewhere to help with that ticking biological clock of yours—"

There was a little dip in the conversation there in which Panther would have probably imagined Detective Kurusu snorting if she hadn't been busy blushing so hard she could feel her pulse in the tips of her ears.

"—but I _will_ tell you not to sleep with her. We can pass off conversations—at least then we'll be playing with fire instead of, I don't know, magma... _boiling tar_...—but my best detective can't... how do they say... stick his dick in crime. Especially not _this_ crime."

"Did Futaba teach you that one?"

"She was an inspiration, yes."

It was his turn to heave a sigh.

"It's... the best deal you're going to get." The Commissioner sounded borderline apologetic.

"I know."

"Then... I take my leave, I guess." The scrape of shoes against cement. "You should too. Go back to your hotel room and take a shower. Remember to air out the car."

"Yes ma'am."

"It's too bad I can't meet her one day," the Commissioner said idly as she started walking. "I wish I could meet the person who made you smile like that."

"...Yeah, I wish you could meet her too."

The Commissioner's footsteps stopped.

"You'd love her. You all would."

The Commissioner didn't seem to have a reply for that, and after a long moment, seemed to sigh out all of her tension at once.

"Hey, let's... let's go for drinks on Saturday. No pickups, I promise I won't talk about Eiko, just..."

When Detective Kurusu spoke again, his voice had warmed up again. "Sounds like a plan."

"See you later."

Panther sat there long after they both left, jaw locked over silent tears.

There it was.

Someone had said it.

Not as gently as Shiho would have put it, but it had been said all the same. Been made real, something more than just her own floating insecurities.

What she wanted would ruin him.

They could still talk. She could still get her information and hear his voice and fluster over his subtle teasing and keep trying to eke out those rare chuckles, all the whole knowing what it was like to have more. Knowing she could wreck him if she set her mind to it and just how _gentle_ he could be, forever wondering about the possibilities and living from week to week until she could see him again.

At least, she could until she slipped up for real. Death or imprisonment or worse—that had stopped mattering a long time ago, but...

He'd miss her.

Shiho had missed her, had cried, _yelled_ even, when Ann contacted her again that first time. What if Ann never contacted her—_either_ of them again at all?

What would happen then?

They'd miss her.

She didn't want that. She didn't want them to miss her. _She_ already missed _them_ so much it felt like she couldn't breathe. How could she want them to taste even a fraction of that?

Detective Kurusu—he'd wanted her to meet those friends of his. Meet Commissioner Niijima and his adopted sister and his best friends from high school, those people who'd scooped up kittens from their friend's litter so she wouldn't have to miss them and then named each and every one after the guy who'd convinced them to do it—

For the first time, she was starting to grasp how deeply, _desperately_ she wanted in on that.

Phantom Thief Panther didn't do friends. Or homes. Or kittens. Occupational hazard.

Only a few of many, and it only paid in justice, really.

Detective Kurusu and Commissioner Niijima seemed to manage justice _and_ friends _and_ homes _and_ kittens just fine, and that was the bitterest pill of all.

'Do you ever think about giving it up?'

She did. She did, she did, _she did._

But really, no matter how much wanted, yearned, craved for something that horribly, wonderfully _normal,_ she still had nowhere she could... go...

Wait.

Yes, she did.

* * *

**Cop**

* * *

Both Akira and Makoto were both back in Tokyo by the time Saturday came around, so they were both familiar with the haunt they chose.

Makoto still ended up talking about Eiko, just by consequence of the sheer amount of her life that was involved with her almost-fiancee, but she _did_ do her best not to gush, and Akira appreciated the sentiment.

(There was no one waiting for him when he got home, and that was—fine. It was fine.)

Futaba let herself into his apartment at 3 A.M. that night and passed out on his couch because her neighbors were partying too loud for her to sleep, and he woke up to the sounds of the newest Grand Theft Auto streaming on his television.

He crammed as much paperwork into the morning as he could manage to focus on (_the supple lower lip between his teeth and the supple curves pressed against his front_) with Futaba gaming as noisily as she did, and then Ryuji dragged him and Haru to a rugby game in the afternoon.

Neither Akira nor Haru did the rabid cheering thing very well, so they ended up on the side of the crowd while Ryuji screamed and hollered with the best of them (_someone who would fit right in here was missing_), but they all dug into the hot dogs with the same fervor, Haru's eyes alight with that hungry bloodlust she got at these events and Ryuji's energy even wilder and everywhere-er than usual.

(He's almost ordered a fourth hot dog with a dessert at the stand too, but caught himself just in time. There was no one here to eat them.)

It was Yusuke on his couch that night—Hifumi had delivered him with an expression that meant 'I don't get paid enough for this' in Hifumi-speak and mentioned that his blood-donating hobby had gone a little too far that day—and Akira finished up the rest of his paperwork after feeding him iron supplements and miso soup.

(The iron supplements that _had_ been for Makoto back when she was his roommate, because her cycles were terrible (_the same kind of terrible that could have someone passing out on a bathroom floor if they'd just climbed a few walls and crawled through a few vents and jumped a few roofs_), but she had Eiko now, and that was fine. Eiko was a reliable sort. She'd make sure nothing happened to Makoto.)

(_but who would make sure nothing happened to—_)

The next day, it was back to work, reviewing his cases and checking for any new leads. There were none, and he was all caught up in an hour, so he drifted over to Futaba's desk and started organizing it for her while she was sucked into her laptop.

She was always grateful for it, and he didn't want to be alone with his thoughts right then. They kept going in directions he didn't want them to.

He picked up Ryuji's spare paperwork while he was at it, which Ryuji squinted at him for but didn't protest against.

Somehow, somehow that kept him occupied until the end of the day, and once again he went home to an empty apartment.

(That was _fine._)

Makoto posted the news of her engagement on social media the next morning—apparently she'd told everyone else personally except him as petty revenge for ruining the surprise—which, of course, demanded a party, which he was drafted into making dinner for.

Too much time to think. Too much.

He _refused_ to turn to alcohol over this.

(He still ended up drinking twice as much as he normally did at the party because the stars of the show ended up cuddled up on his couch in a rare moment of PDA, so happy they just didn't care.

Haru asked who'd popped the question and Futaba said that it was Makoto, which triggered a conversation about who was likely to propose next, even if none of them technically had significant others yet and only Futaba _wanted_ one. Haru was looking, but only out of a sense of duty.

"Fine, so we don't really know who'll propose next," Futaba conceded at length, "but I can tell you who'll propose last."

She tossed a sly, knowing glance at Akira, and he forgot that he was supposed to play it off until after the beat had passed.

He didn't _do_ commitment, and he didn't pick people who did commitment, either. They knew that and he...

Knew that. Sort of.

(He'd never met _anyone_ quite as two-kids-and-an-apartment-on-the-east-side as—)

Ryuji fixed him with a much longer, much more thoughtfully knowing look. "I dunno, man. You never know. He's not made of stone."

Futaba startled, genuine surprise notched up for effect. _"Ryuji_ said something _sensitive!"_

"Oh, fuck off."

Akira got up to get a Coke, fully intending to stop his booze consumption there, and ended up topping it off with a few shots of rum anyway.)

Food and an aggressive amount of water kept the next morning's hangover to a minimum, and, faced with a full day of nothing, he called Sae up to let her know he could pick up the two officially-weaned kittens he'd called dibs on.

(Kittens who were _kittens_ and couldn't indignantly object to being called (nicknamed) such; _come on, I'm not just some little kittycat!_)

...He was doing a really shitty job of not thinking about her.

(He was going to talk to her soon enough, maybe—_maybe_—steal a kiss, gently nudge her away from anything... _more_ while it _killed him,_ then all he could do was pray she would be fine and he'd get to see her again in a couple of weeks so he could repeat the process all over again.

Worth it, worth it, _worth it,_ but god...)

(_She'd said that she loved—_)

Thankfully, kittens were distracting. Getting Morgana used to them and vice versa, trying to occupy their boundless energy, being used as a climbing structure for prickly claws and sharp gazes—and, you know, the cuteness factor in general.

He didn't often get the chance to take care of anything this small. The stray cats that he fed around his building didn't turn up until the tail end of their adolescence at the youngest. He liked this more than he thought he would.

The littler one with the white ruff, now dubbed Arsene, had fallen asleep on his chest when the doorbell rang.

A baffling occurrence. The only people who bothered to let him get the door were Haru and Hifumi, and they always knocked.

(Sometimes he wondered how they'd all gotten keys, and then remembered a parade of individual events that had ended with him copying the master key and placing the duplicates in each of their hands.)

He only felt slightly guilty at displacing Arsene to get up, and when he opened the door...

Possibly the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his _life_ stood on his doorstep.

He registered big blue eyes first, then plush lips with the corner caught between her teeth, loose waves of gold brushed behind her shoulders and an outfit that only registered as 'soft' and 'warm' before his eyes were on her face again because _oh wow..._

"Hey, so..." she said, and oh. _Oh._ "Is that couch offer still open?"

He'd answer if only his mouth functioned. He was pretty sure his jaw was hanging slack and he couldn't fix it.

"I mean, only for a few nights," she added quickly, and that blush was _so much prettier_ when he could actually _see_ it. "I went and contacted my old modeling agency, and they said they'd be happy to have me back, but it'll take a week or so for them to find me a gig. I don't want to look for an apartment until I can make a legitimate down payment."

Rooted to the spot, he managed to pick his jaw up off the floor and croak, "Mi casa es su casa."

She _glowed._ Literally _glowed._

He coughed to clear his throat (it half worked), and then had to ask, "What... what changed your mind?"

She hesitated, her bright blue gaze wandering, and then softly admitted, "I finally realized... I don't want to be alone anymore."

"Well. Good."

_What kind of fever dream is this?_

Then, "Wait, 'modeling agency'?"

She swung her arms sheepishly, and for the first time, he noticed her bag—worn, barren, something between a duffel bag and a messenger bag, and much smaller than he'd thought anyone _could_ live out of. "I used to model as a teenager," she explained cheerfully. "This one was founded by old associates of my parents, and _man_ it grew while I was gone. I guess old Mr. Kutzer had his head on straight after all."

He breathed. "Right." Then, because apparently he was in enough shock to run his mouth, "Model. I don't know why I didn't expect that."

Her expression abruptly soured. "I think you'd need to think I'm _hot_ to expect that," she said, definitely irritated.

He stared. And stared. And stared a little more.

What, exactly, did she think he thought of her looks? What did _she_ think she looked like, even?

"Don't look at me like that," she grumbled. "It took a whole _explanation's worth_ of double entendre while you touched my boobs to get you to think about, you know... _it."_

"No," he finally managed. "It didn't."

It _really_ hadn't.

A funny spasm quirked her mouth. "You only ever look at my face! What am I supposed to think!"

A quiet, almost hysterical laugh escaped him, not out of humor so much as out of just being _overwhelmed_—and here he'd thought the sex was the worst she could throw at him. Apparently ridiculous and oddly mundane conversations while he was trying to process elation and relief and _dis_belief and a myriad of other things going too fast to name could do him in as well.

"I like your face," he said with a helpless smile, throat locked up tight and chest too warm, then stepped back to invite her in.

She stood stunned, baffled by... something and blushing under the compliment like he never thought a model _would,_ then blinked the stupor away and started forward.

Instead of walking through the door, however, she stopped in front of him.

One hand froze halfway to reaching for his chest, fingers curling into her palm, chin tilted up in a much more powerful invitation than his, gazing up at him with something that was half hope and half plea and—

He was already leaning down by the time she had caught hold of his shirt to pull him closer, and they met halfway in a searing kiss.

It would have been enough to _ruin_ him if he hadn't been ruined already.

That outfit was even softer than it looked, cashmere and cotton and not a scrap of vinyl to be found. The body under it was _addicting_ in its pliant vulnerability, the way she melted into him and then surged into the kiss with that little mewl—

_Fffffuck._

He was gripping the door jam for stability and support this time, not restraint.

It ended with them both panting hard—god, there wasn't enough oxygen in the _world_ right now—and Akira giving himself a minute or two to scrounge up a couple shreds of his wits.

She took that minute or two to trail kisses down his neck, bare nails scraping over his nape and bare fingers burying into his hair.

The sigh that fluttered over his jugular was one of pure satisfaction. "I've _always_ wanted to do this," she murmured as she carded her fingers through the locks.

Which helped exactly nothing, least of all the heat rising in his face or his shaking heart.

('Always'?)

He swallowed, but his voice still came out rougher than not. "You're welcome to do it as much as you want."

He felt her fingers curl as her lips curved against his neck, which... also didn't help.

To say the least.

Eventually, he sort of remembered that she'd come here for a reason, and that reason _didn't_ involve getting pinned against his front door before she'd even set foot inside or immediately dragged off to bed the second she did (that would be bad manners, Akira, it _would_), so he let go of her and staggered a step back, pushing her away just slightly when she didn't follow suit.

Easier said than done, but he did it.

(Doing all that _would_ be bad manners... right?)

"M-make yourself at home," he rasped, waving numbly at the interior of his apartment, and after a long moment, she walked in with wide eyes.

Two things: one, the sheer _relief_ of seeing her here, safe, planning to _stay_ hit him like a goddamn tsunami; two, he's _finally_ kissed her well enough that she wobbled in a thoroughly gratifying manner as she made her way over to the couch and collapsed there, staring at the ceiling with something oddly akin to awe until the kittens snatched her attention and kept it.

(The third thing was that the sense of _peace_ that sight gave him was... terrifying, really.)

Well. She'd wanted the couch, right? (Not the bed. _Not_ the bed, shut _up_ brain.) He'd go set it up for her once _he_ could walk without wobbling.

A hiccuping delighted giggle bounced through the apartment, and he looked over to find that she'd found the other kitten and was nosing it with a brilliant smile that knocked the air out of his lungs all over again.

...He'd set up _after_ the shower. The ice cold shower. The one he _desperately needed._

(For his head as much as his dick now. It was getting some funny ideas about how he could keep her here for good.

He was blaming Makoto and her non-stop talk of weddings and marriage _forever._)

"What's this little guy's name?" she called to him, half-laughing.

"...Satanael," he said, once he'd swallowed saliva back into his mouth.

She laughed again, this time _definitely_ at the name, only for it to trail off. "...You know? That's perfect for him."

Akira thought so. "And you?"

She tilted her head, finally looking away from the kitten. "Hm?"

"What's your name? I can't keep calling you 'Panther' forever." In his defense, he _did_ make an attempt to sound more casual than he felt. This roller coaster of emotion apparently involved abruptly realizing the world-ending importance of knowing her actual, real, _personal_ name.

She hesitated, the vulnerability of the answer to that flickering across her face, and then she seemed to settle, relaxing into that trusting look he knew so well by now. "Ann. Ann Takamaki."

"Ann," he repeated, tasting the name.

She cocked her head, bright eyes shining brighter. "Yeah?"

He loved it.

"It's nice to meet you, Ann Takamaki."

She beamed. "Likewise!"

* * *

She stayed on the couch for about three hours.

Then he got up to go to bed himself, and she caught his sleeve, blushing sweetly as she asked if she could come with.

(To which the answer was _yes, yes,_ and also _yes,_ if there was any doubt.)

* * *

He woke up the next morning wondering what the hell he'd been hit with to have a dream like _that,_ and then she (_Ann, Ann, Ann, Ann_) walked through the bathroom door wearing nothing but a towel like a cape.

"I used your soap," she announced, like she _hadn't_ just gotten out of a seashell or something. "I hope you don't... mind..."

Her lips stayed parted as she trailed off, her eyes darkening and that pretty flush rising in her cheeks once again, like maybe she was _feeling_ this where he was just blindsided by it.

He really didn't mind her using his soap.

He didn't even mind her using it twice after she squirmed under him and giggled and nipped his throat and _flirted_ until she'd coaxed him into getting her even dirtier than before.

* * *

He used up about five sick days for work before he felt like he could be anything except a blissed-out puddle at his desk, and even then he was still a blissed-out puddle at his desk, just a mildly productive one.

He came back to find Ann fast asleep on the couch, Arsene wrestling with her hair and Morgana sleeping on her back, and that? Was _so much better_ than 'fine.'

* * *

And he was right: she clicked into the group like she'd been there from the start.

She grumbled at Ryuji and shared cakes with Haru and helped Makoto with the wedding preparations and played Shin Megami Tensei with Futaba and shook off Yusuke's attempts to get her to model for him and took to Hifumi like a duck to water, and _he was right._

She also reconnected with that one friend she'd had in high school and came back glowing, happily telling him all about it in that criminally enchanting voice of hers, dancing around the kitchen until she drifted back to snuggle into his embrace like it was a given.

He couldn't tell which of those things was better; all he knew was that seeing her move out was going to _suck._

* * *

The sex haze let up early enough that she could go to work without getting there covered in hickeys, and he was _definitely_ dreading the apartment-hunt—which sucked less than he thought it would, but still sucked.

At least until Ann, admiring one of her pay stubs a month later, asked what he thought of splitting the rent on his apartment.

In his defense, for as immediately as he said yes then, he _did_ wait another eight months before bringing up rings and legal documents and vows.

(She said yes too.)

* * *

**FIN**

* * *

**A/N:** You can check out my archiveofourown profile (same name as here, arcanawildcard) for the version of this fic with full-blown citrus and additional commentary. Thanks for reading!


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